


Yesterday's The Future, Tomorrow's The Past

by JoelleEmmily, Torious Crash (JoelleEmmily)



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Ending, F/F, Kaidan and Ashley survive, No Paradox, Paragon Commander Shepard, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2019-09-21 05:58:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17038013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoelleEmmily/pseuds/JoelleEmmily, https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoelleEmmily/pseuds/Torious%20Crash
Summary: Thrown back in time, Shepard and crew use their advanced knowledge and technology to make allies, build strategies, and obliterate the reapers before they can take a single casualty.





	1. Escaping Destiny

**Author's Note:**

> This story is a complete rewrite and re-imagining of the previous story I posted under the same name. It'll have all the same themes, mostly the same beats... hopefully better pacing and a more interesting plot... but like before, it's nothing overly complex. Like before, all speech should be assumed to be translated for the other characters as I want to retain and preserve some of the flavor lost in most fiction when a speaker is native to a different language. In other words, they ain't usin' Star Trek's universal translator here. See the TNG episode "Darmok" for some context regarding translation issues.
> 
> A little warning on the brief world building I do for the pre-mass physics humans: I'm not a physicist, but I am a science nerd... so some details concerning the use of Newtonian physics as it's used for space travel, and especially the nature of the higgs-boson particle, might be a little wrong, they should be based in reality. So if you find something blatantly false, please tell me.
> 
> This Shepard is based mostly on a default Earth Born Vanguard with sniper training. She participated in Akuze and Elysium, but didn't do Torfan, and has not completed every mission. She's nearly 100% Paragon, with a very low Renegade score, avoids killing at nearly all costs, and's always polite with her dialogue choices.
> 
> In deviating from the game plot, both Ashley and Kaidan survive Virmire, but at the cost of Kirrahe and his team, which Shepard hates herself for. Her childhood is also a big deviation and I might write a side story for that. She still grew up on the 'streets' but in a place more like Slab City near San Diego. There, she grew up in a multi-species community (just like anywhere else, some aliens moved to Earth for a better life, but run out of money before they could make it), showed leadership abilities at a very young age, did everything to help keep her home going, including selling her body, but in the end, was rescued by her grandmother.
> 
> She saved the council, blew the collector base, so on and so forth, but, Zaeed and Jacob died during the collector assault. In ME3, she saves both the Quarian and the Geth, but loses Javik at some point (I really don't like him). If she went into end game, she would not have had full EMS or military strength, but would've still gotten the best ending, minus her own survival. And she's been faithful to Liara throughout the games.
> 
> Jack, Miranda, and Oriana, are also on the ship. In this story, Jack and Miranda have been in a relationship for a while, and after Shepard rescued Jack from Grissom academy, she went with Miranda to Sanctuary. From there, they and Oriana were rescued by Shepard, the Cerberus Headquarters mission happened immediately after; then, on the way to earth, the time thing. Kasumi is also aboard ship for some inexplicable reason.
> 
> Also, any non-cannon names given to in-game characters, will be based on bastardizations of the voice actor's or the model's name for that character, and although I might use the same names between stories, each story is its own contained universe and has nothing to do with the other.
> 
> Finally, even though this version of this story is a complete rewrite, it wasn't created in a vacuum, and I'd one again like to thank those that've helped me along the way:  
> [eurodox59](http://archiveofourown.org/users/eurodox59/pseuds/eurodox59)  
> [Star_Catcher](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Catcher/pseuds/Star_Catcher)  
> [Kudara](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Kudara/pseuds/Kudara)  
> [TmAnR](http://archiveofourown.org/users/TmAnR/pseuds/TmAnR)  
> [angietheaunt](http://archiveofourown.org/users/angietheaunt/pseuds/angietheaunt)  
> All gave me advice, encouragement, pointed out things they liked, corrected me when needed, and made suggestions on what they wanted to see. Without wonderful readers like them, this story would be a lot worse off. Thank you all so very much.

Fifty thousand years of life, of parents begetting children, of civilizations growing and evolving... of friends and lovers coming together to celebrate each others' existence... all driven to the brink of extinction, thrust into the abyss of nothingness. Earth... Thessia... Palaven... Dekuuna... Irune... invaded, their cities destroyed, their populations decimated... their soil adulterated... And the citadel, the galaxy's gleaming beacon of civility and unity... retaken by its masters, its trap successfully sprung... its victims crushed to death beneath its lethargic allure.

"Reapers one and two, bearing one-eight-two by zero-four, closing, now one-million meters per second."

Shepard's strangling, twisting grip on the galaxy map's dais' railing, tightened. "I can see that EDI." She spied into the distant bridge. "Joker!?"

"I'm trying Commander!"

"New contact," Traynor interrupted, fear and dread choking her words, "bearing zero-one-one by zero-three."

Liara's earnest, trusting eyes, sought her Bondmate's, apprehension lacing their steely determination. "They are directly in our flight path for the relay."

The Asari's father, only recently reunited and amended with, was probably dead, as were Ashley's sisters, joker's sister, Kaidan's parents, Traynor's entire family... the whole of her crew... orphaned and alone.

"Next person who tells me something I already know," Shepard's anger flared, her self-flagellation, her failures, bled into her feelings towards her crew. But she swallowed the self-administered venom down, and modified her tone before continuing, "is fired."

"CIC, Alenko, port thruster assembly is starting to melt!"

In an attempt to trivialize the blatant direness of their situation, the Commander injected even more exasperated levity into her voice. "Something new, and helpful!"

Shepard would do anything for her crew... for *her* family. Unlike the rest of them, with a few exceptions, everyone she'd ever come to care for, was aboard ship. She'd used her position and power, liberally abused her authority, and outright intimidated a few of her friends, to get them on Normandy where she could protect them. Every non-critical room, every corridor, the shuttle bay, had her people crammed in, their cots and supplies strewn all over the decks.

"Sharp rise in local gamma radiation levels."

Defeat might be inevitable, and victory, if they could win it, would be as bitter and as satisfying as ash. This was her fail-safe, her people gathered and provisioned... at least for a little while... their futures secured for the short term... until they could scrounge something better.

"Ma'am," Samantha barked when her report continued to be ignored. "Gamma radiation now at ten to the power of thirty and rising."

Shepard's éperdu shattered. "Say again?"

"Gamma radiation now ten to the power of thirty-one!"

"Is it coming from the reapers?"

Williams, at tactical, shook her head. "No skipper... I'm not sure where it's coming from."

"Ten to the power of thirty-two!"

Turning on Traynor, the Commander bore a heavy gaze down upon her. "Nothing outputs energy levels like that..."

Liara's distraught burned through her icy facade. "A stellar nova."

"Fuck..." Shepard's eyes drifted to the galaxy map, her thoughts going as unfocused as her sight of its holographic image...

If they bolted for empty space, escaped the reapers, the star's wave front would consume the mass relay in a few hours, destroying it, practically trapping Normandy near Anadius. They could head for Pax, but it'd take a few weeks, and in the meantime, the reapers could find and destroy the crucible... harvest more lives...

"Commander," Joker shouted, "should I make a run for it!?"

"Activating a mass relay at FTL has never resulted in a survivable exit," EDI countered.

They had to go through the relay, no matter the risks... escaping the war by dying, wasn't an option... But how would they get past the reaper ahead? A Javelin volley and continuous Thanix fire could limit its targeting, blinding it long enough to slip past...

Decision made, she turned her head toward Traynor, but her eyes remained on the Galaxy Map. "Samantha? Give me ship wide." She waited a beat. "All hands, this is Shepard. We'll be dancing past a reaper; then hitting a relay at near FTL... Put your lids on. Williams, transfer all non-criticals to shields, including life support. Garrus, on my mark, fire everything we have at the reaper. Tali, on my mark, dump core energy into shields."

"Aye-aye skipper," "Understood Commander," "Keelah, I hope this works."

Anxiety blossomed in full in Shepard's chest... Near certain death, or near certain failure, and if either occurred, what the hell would've been the point in gathering everyone up? So they could die together? But would that really be so bad? No one would have to miss anyone else, or be forced to watch the galaxy decay even further... Live as one, die as one.

"Shepard, I uncovered several experiments performed by the protheans-"

"Point Liara," the Commander interrupted, heading off the Asari's inevitable long-winded explanation.

"I believe I can supply EDI information which may aid our survival through the relay."

"Do it."

"I have Dr T'Soni's specifications," EDI confirmed almost immediately. "However, I cannot give an estimation on survivability."

"Do we have another choice?"

The AI paused a moment. "No."

"Great EDI, very final."

They'd come so far, done so much... They weren't going to die, they'd all see the crucible fire...

Shepard took a deep breath, cleared her mind. "Time."

"Reaper weapon's range ETA thirty seconds, relay one minute fifteen."

She'd died once, and while being asphyxiated as her saliva evaporated and froze in her mouth, hadn't exactly been pleasant, death itself, hadn't been all that disturbing... it was almost like being asleep... except, no nightmares. There were no guarantees in life, they could all die in a few minutes, or tomorrow, or Shepard could live long enough to lecture her kids about their first dates. Everyone in the universe, subsisted on borrowed time... The asari were genetically gifted with the possibility of a thousand years of life, yet most maidens participated in such risky behaviour, they died younger than a lot of humans did. Some humans lived to be two hundred and fifty, but died having accomplished nothing, achieving nothing.

Shepard looked around at her crew, their features varying wildly from worry, to panic, to determination... to resignation. Except for Liara, who gazed at her with the kind of trust and openness she hadn't seen since the Saren mission... and Williams, who was mumbling the Saint Crispin's Day speech under her breath while staring at Traynor's hands. Her two best friends... one she longed to spend every second of her day with, pretending to listen as she explained something needlessly complex, caring for unconditionally... the other, you could almost say Shepard loved to hate, both sending the other to the infirmary more than once, both willing to fight to the death at the other's side.

"Fire..." The word sounded in her ear, vibrated her throat... but the conscious effort to speak it, hadn't registered in her mind.

"Javelin one and two away, Thanix bursts on target!"

"No damage to reaper destroyer!"

"Reaper shots missed us Commander, they missed us!"

Her crew's reports were distant... reality indistinct... She was detached, her mind aimless, her body and eyes fixed in their last position... "Transfer core power..."

"Mass Core to shields!"

"Direct hit forward port quarter, barriers holding!"

"Relay in thirty seconds. FTL dilation effect in three, two-"

"All hands, stand by for jump!"

"EDI, take the helm..."

The harsh reality bending that accompanied shutting down one's mass core at faster than light, made Shepard sick to her stomach. Some people loved the bleeding and waving lights, some thought it the best mind trip in the universe...

"By the Goddess..."

Jane hated it...

Without the time dilating affect of a mass field, seconds passed faster than could be measured, and forward momentum dropped to sub-FTL nearly instantly... Then the relay warped that reality for another immeasurably small moment... then the ship and crew found themselves spat into normal space-time, violent shuttering throwing everyone about the deck... then another timeless flash, and Shepard found herself staring up at the ceiling from the centre of the galaxy map, the compartment completely and utterly dark, her artificial eyeballs the only thing giving her even the slightest of views.

"Report," she ordered, but it came out as barely a croak. "Report," she tried again, struggling to pick herself up off the projector.

"I can't see a bloody thing."

"No kidding Sam, might be because we're in a sealed tin can floating in the blackness of deep space?"

"Williams, zip it," Shepard grunted. "Someone get emergency lights up."

"Shepard?"

"I'm over here Liara."

"I think," the Maiden paused. "I think one of my crests is crushed."

"Damn hunny... Snap your fingers, I'll make my way over to you. Everyone else, roll call by rank."

"Williams, no injury."

"Joker, broken arm... leg too I think, maybe a rib or two."

"Wait," Shepard interrupted, "why aren't you snapping your fingers Liara?"

"How does one do such a thing?"

"Jeez," Ashley huffed, "she's right here Skipper," then began snapping.

"Everyone, carry on roll call."

"Traynor, a few bruises, and a minor concussion I'd wager."

Shepard swept her hand from side to side as she inched forward in near blindness. Within moments, she found soft scaly flesh. "Where?" She squatted next to Liara.

"Second right crest. I am slightly dazed as well."

"I've got medi-gel on me skipper." Ashley reached out with the applicator until her fist met something solid.

"Thanks Ash." Shepard took the device with her left hand, while continuing to seek out her Bondmate's injuries with her right.

"Ouch," Liara flinched away.

"I think it's just a bruise hun."

"It does not feel like a bruise. It feels as though the skin has been torn off, and all that remains is exposed cartilage."

"T'Soni," Ashley scoffed, "thank you so much for the vivid imagery."

"Williams," the Commander admonished tersely, "go get the emergencies online."

The Maiden waited for the other human to leave. "I believe she was only using humour to defuse the situation my love."

"No she was not, she was trying to make herself feel better by bitching." Shepard gently rubbed the gel into Liara's swollen crest.

"You sometimes do the same."

"I don't direct my bitchiness at others."

"You do, at times."

"Could we fight later please? Our situation is on the short list for disastrous."

"I disagree," Liara's voice held a slight song. "We are no longer under attack, and we are in one piece."

"Good point." Shepard helped the Asari stand. "But we have no idea why power's out, or where we are, or if a reaper is seconds away from blowing us out of existence. And hypothetically, we could all be dead and sitting around an afterlife."

"Wouldn't it be odd to continue to feel pain while deceased?"

"Maybe, maybe not. The last time, I didn't feel any pain, but the world was about as black and surreal as it is now."

Liara sighed as she snaked her arms around her Bondmate's torso. "Very well. We may all be dead."

"Good." Shepard gave the Maiden a tight hug. "At least we're together."

"Yes." Liara indulged in the brief cuddle.

Death had become a trivial thing, not just between the two of them, but among the entire crew. When the videos of Shepard being spaced in her own suit, and the images of her chard and broken body, inevitably surfaced, her friends were among the first to consume them. Most being officers or soldiers, they laughed them off, made jokes, and teased Shepard relentlessly about being a space age jesus... but nothing they said or did, truly dispelled the seed of gruesome disturb that had taken root in each of their souls... so the dismiss became pathological, the discussion nearly ritualistic...

Shepard kissed Liara on the forehead as they separated; then turned slightly as not to shout in the Asari's face. "Report!"

The Maiden stifled another sigh, the moment of tranquility had not lasted long.

"Looks like backups are drain skipper."

"Ashley," the Commander deadpanned, "how in hell can chemical backups be drained."

"I have no idea," Williams groused back, "but they're dead. The leads won't even spark."

"Shit," Shepard rubbed at her neck.

"Commander?" Joker's voice grew louder, a crewman helping him hobble into CIC. "If the ship's completely powerless... what about EDI?"

Her heart sank at the despair in the Man's voice, but there was now the real possibility that the ship would never move again, and they'd all freeze to death in a few days... or be picked off by a passing reaper in hours. Ignoring the unproductive thoughts piling up in her psyche, she blindly inched her way toward the lift.

"I'm sorry to have to say this Jeff, but we need to concentrate on one thing at a time."

"Yes ma'am."

His dejection was crushing. How would Shepard feel if Liara was the one someone said might have to be left to die for the sake of others? What if she herself was forced to make that decision... She'd never been able to accept those sorts of ultimatums. When faced with the choice of sacrificing Ashley or Kaidan, she risked the entire crew, the mission, just for the slimmest of chances to save them. Her suicide run crew, she made absolutely sure each and every one of them had something to live for. Shepard did not leave people behind... she'd been left behind once... more than once... and she just could not suffer that state upon another.

Jane pulled her thoughts back to the situation at hand, and opened a panel to the right of the lift; then began cranking the handle on a piece of technology she thought she'd never use.

"Shepard," Liara asked, her soft voice emanating only a few paces behind, and dangerously hinted with wonder. "Is that what I believe it is?"

"I have no idea what it's really called, in ship's training they called it a squawk box."

"It is a mechanically powered communicator. It's a common fixture on dig sites."

"Glad we could make you feel at home hun." Shepard immediately felt guilty, completely unsure as to whether her words came out playful, or dismissive. She pushed those feelings aside as well, as she picked up the archaic handset.

"Attention all crew," her voice echoed as it repeated over the speakers, "this is Shepard. Each section is to choose a comm officer who will man the emergency circuit until relieved. All stations are to report on the EC within five minutes. All decks are to take casualty and injury surveys, and report on the EMC. If doctor Chakwas' section hasn't reported in the next two minutes, all officers on deck three are to converge on sickbay. Miranda Lawson, report to EDI's server room ASAP and take command. Maintenance, suit up, exit through a mechanical pressure lock, and examine the hull. That is all."

"I'll take the squawk Commander."

"Keep your station Traynor," Shepard held up a hand in the blackness. "I need you on ship's systems. Campbell, can you hear me?"

"Yes ma'am?"

"Get your butt over here. First, tell Westmoreland to secure the war room and get her ass out here too."

"Yes ma'am."

"CIC, Chakwas. Sickbay's operational, no crew reporting."

Shepard held back her relief, it was still early. "Campbell, acknowledge her on the EMC, report Doctor T'Soni as having a minor head injury with possible superficial crest damage, and that Joker's glass bones have broken again." She turned to her Bondmate. "Hun, how are you with chemical power cells?"

"I have extensive experience with such technology. But Shepard? You may not realize this, asari can partially see the infrared band."

"Thank the blue goddess for small miracles." She kissed Liara on the cheek. "Help Williams with backup power. Can you tell people apart? Work control surfaces?"

"I'm sorry my love, I cannot, but I can see the shape of bodies, and the outlines of most of the stations." The Maiden looked around the room. "Unfortunately, if they remain inactive for much longer, they will become too cold for me to distinguish at all."

"Alright, work as fast as you can. And hun?" Shepard shifted to a whisper. "Safety is not a concern at the moment."

Liara nodded. "Yes Commander. My top priority will be to regain power."

"Williams?" She waited a beat. "T'Soni's in charge of repairs. You will assist. And you'll keep the grousing to a minimum unless you'd like to try chief on for size again."

"Understood."

The supreme effort of trying not to sound disgruntled, was blatant to Shepard's ear, but it didn't matter, despite anything else Ash could be, she was an excellent officer, and knew when to follow orders without discussion. Unfortunately, she also seemed to know exactly when to push her luck... and just how far to do so.

"Commander?" Traynor snapped her fingers several times to allow the other woman to get a bearing on her. "I've pulled the power feeds on the comm's master controls. It seems they're cold as well. I believe I may be able to hot wire my toothbrush's energy pack into it though."

Shepard leaned in Samantha's direction. "You carry that thing with you at all times now?"

"Yes ma'am."

The Commander shook her head. "Get me anything Specialist..."

"Heads up," Joker announced, "we're about to pull pin on emergency life support."

"Liara, cover your auditory membranes."

"I am ready Shepard."

"Hit it Joker."

"Here goes nothing."

A loud clack echoed throughout the room, followed by an oppressive wave of sticky heavy air.

"At least we won't suffocate," Shepard quipped, trying to inject as much humour as she could. "Good work Moreau-"

"Holy shit!" A crew-member suddenly shouted from forward.

"Report." When no reply came, Jane raced to the bridge. "I said Report!" Then felt her gut fall onto her bladder... A missile was streaming straight for them. "Brace for impact! Brace! *Brace!*"

The missile erupted on impact, filling the compartment with light so bright, it burned her skin and shook Normandy with the violence of a planetary quake... But the hull held... the view port held...

"What the hell was that Commander? The glass didn't even crack."

"Fuck." Shepard turned back to CIC. "Fuck! Campbell, get a crewman on every window, look for a ship. Use fucking suit targeting scanners if they have to." 

It wasn't a reaper, they wouldn't bother with such a weakly weapon... and it didn't look like anything she recognize from the combined fleet. Hitting the relay as they did, theoretically, they could be anywhere in the galaxy... Fuck did she hate how often the universe gave her nothing to work with.

"Incoming!"

Shepard reached out for the edge of a console to steady herself. "Edwards, calm the fuck down, the shots have less power than a shoulder mounted rocket. Campbell, inquire Adams on the possibility of stabilization."

"Adams reports that he can use the power from the chemical reaction thrusters, but there won't be enough to run the stabilizers and EDI's life support at the same time."

"Prioritize EDI." At that point, it wasn't even a question, the crew could live with being shaken around like a stripper's tit's, the AI would die without power.

"I see something," Edwards announced. "About twenty-two degrees to starboard, almost on the same plain. I'm not sure how far away it is. It looks heavy, its turns are sluggish."

An idea sprang into the Commander's mind. "Can you see an exhaust trail?"

"Yes ma'am, a long one, waving around like a torn hydraulic hose."

Liara gasped. "A pre-mass physics society..."

"Fuck!" Shepard drove her heel has hard as she could into the galaxy map console. "How far are we from earth!"

It was a rhetorical question, none of them would know, and probably wouldn't be able to find out for hours. They took a risk, gambled to get to the front-line to help the war effort... Instead, they found themselves in the middle of nowhere, so isolated from the relay network and any past cycle's information cache, that the civilization occupying the region, were still using Newtonian physics to putter around space. They'd never get to earth in time... the reapers would scour the known galaxy clean of intelligent life again...

"Commander?" Samantha hazarded carefully. "I've restored partial comms." She put the transmission on speakers without being ordered.

"*I say again, stand down and prepare to be boarded.*"

"They're speaking Alliance Standard ma'am."

"*Unknown vessel, this is Captain Shepard commanding FSS Damysus. I'm not going to keep warning you, surrender now, or I *will* break you.*"

"Have we time dilated into the future ma'am," Traynor wondered allowed, "did humanity survive and start to rebuild."

A flash from another explosion lit Commander Shepard's face, exposing the distant, almost pained expression etched into her features.

"We time travelled ma'am," a crewman supposed.

"At the speed of light," Liara supplied, "our bodies would be in relative stasis, but the ship's systems would require ever increasing amounts of energy to operate. This would be consistent with what we are seeing now."

"Billions must've lost their lives," Williams added absently, "all lost to the reapers' relentless onslaught."

"*I repeat, unknown vessel, surrender or I will destroy you.*"

"Can we return signal, Specialist?" Shepard began staring into the blankness...

"Yes ma'am, but at an extremely low power."

"Do it."

"You'll have to use this headset ma'am." Samantha blindly handed over the device.

Shepard slipped the bulky thing over her head; then depressed the mechanical button Traynor placed in her hand. "FSS Damysus, this is Commander... of SR2 Normandy. We're conducting normal operations, and have not engaged. Disengage assault."

"*Bull-fucking-shit Normandy! You think we haven't noticed the broad spectrum beam you're trying to punch through our hull with? Stand down or I'll empty our entire mag on you.*"

"The hull must've been saturated before the jump," Ashley offered.

"Damysus..." Shepard paused, the sting of tears clawing at her eyes. "Hannah... I swear, we're not firing on you. Our hull's reflective, and the outer armour's been irradiated. It's collimating the radiation and releasing it at acute angles. If you move beyond ninety degrees off our long axis, you won't be able to detect the radiation any more."

"*Who the hell is this?*"

"I'm sorry ma'am, I can't tell you that over comms. Please believe me, we are not taking aggressive action."

"They're moving further out to starboard Commander," Edwards shouted.

Shepard couldn't hear him, her focus was lost in the slight static buzzing from within the transmission. "How's Conan ma'am?"

There was a short pause. "*Fine, could probably use a filter change.*"

The slowly brightening emergency lights, brought the small smile on the Commander's lips to life. The old bitch was testing her. "Since when does a cat need a filter? Or did you decide to put him in a pressure suit to skirt the regs? Or are you confusing him with Aegaeon?"

"*Aegaeon's fine too, resting comfortably in my quarters.*"

"In your first officer's quarters, right next to the warning you issue every fifteen days to her for having a pet aboard."

"*Who the hell are you? Are you under Blackwell's command?*"

"No ma'am, I'm not under Admiral Blackwell. If you could come aboard Normandy, we can discuss the situation."

"*Girl, I haven't even stowed weapons. If you think your little hork of personal information's made me trust you, you must've polished brass to get your rank.*"

"I did have an in ma'am, my grandmother was an Admiral, but she made me work for a living."

"*Good woman. Now tell me who you are, or you won't get to tell me who she was.*"

"I can't do that right now ma'am. Please, transfer over, you can bring any security contingent or weapons you like."

"*Fine... I'll bite. But I'm coming alone, and my crew will have orders to turn you into dust if you so much as flinch.*"

"Yes ma'am. Thank you ma'am." Shepard slipped the headset off and handed it back to Traynor.

"Shepard?" Williams levelled a suspicious glare at the other woman. "You know that person..."

"I do." The Commander began decoupling the lift's hydraulic lines to release the doors. "She's my grandmother."


	2. Siren's Call

They can teach you how to fly a ship, fire a weapon, patch holes shot up in injured comrades, and piss in zero gravity... They can even teach a stupid grunt the complex relationship between space and time... But they can't teach you how to handle the unknown... And how could they? Knowledge and certainty, is complacency in bed with his whore... We know what we know, but we don't know what we can't know because of our current prospective, so to us, it doesn't exist... But because of the twitchy anxiety of our primate brains, we delude ourselves into believing we could plan for the mysterious, anticipate the unpredictable... do the impossible... But it also causes us to rationalize holding onto the boundaries of the old 'we know what we know', when a new prospective draws fresh lines in the sands of our reality.

"Captain... are you out of your god damned mind?"

That ship out there, holding station close enough you could look out a window and see it, was one of those reality changers. It's technology was so different, so unknowable, that it couldn't be human made... Why were its decks parallel to its direction of acceleration? How could its hull shrug off three half gigatonne explosions, or reflect the enormous amounts of radiation generated by them? How did it just suddenly appear out of no where? Because it was of alien design... It had to be... Hannah could feel it, could smell it...

"Ben," Shepard breathed, pausing in pulling herself along the long axis of her ship, causing her two senior officers to also halt. "What the hell else would you recommend I do? Their Captain knows things about me, details about de Burca, and *requested* I transfer over. Would you rather we just sit here, staring at each other, hands on our tits until the universe dies of heat death?"

The man glowered at the back of his CO's head. "We wait here until the fleet arrives."

"Then what? Wait some-more? Wait till the earthers show up? Wait till that neutronium skinned tank decides to do something?"

"Ma'am, with all do respect-"

"Hold it right there Benjamin." Hannah turned to face her officer. "I told you the next time you said that, I'd space you a little." She locked her feet in the corridor's handhold to leverage herself; then swung her body menacingly toward his. "Strength in numbers? Dealing with that thing alone is an unwarranted risk? It could be an earther trap?" She pointed vaguely in Normandy's direction. "That thing could fly through us and not take a scratch... We could line up the whole of both fleets in a neat little row, let her careen its way down the thickest part of our shit... and it'd come out the other side smelling of fresh atmo." She paused. "But we should wait..."

"Ma'am," he tried again, but was again cut off.

"You know why I keep you here Benny?" Shepard dismissed the man's presence as she continued toward aft weapons, her voice carelessly directed at the wall as she punted herself along. "Because you make me look good. You make the rest of the senior officers' lives a little easier. You're such a mind-numbing yutz, that the whole crew can direct their ire at you, and think the rest of us super heroes."

As if planned to prove her point, a crewman drifted along in the other direction, nodding respectfully as she passed. "Captain, Commander de Burca." But acted as if Benjamin was a floating hole in the air.

"Your theories have no basis in reality," the man countered, "and your belief that humanity would finally come together if we met aliens, is an assumption so baseless, the scientific community cannibalizes their own when one of them brings it up. That ship out there, is a secret earther project, and their choosing us to test it on because we're the best in the system. And of course they fucking know you and Commander de Burca, everyone in the system knows you and Burca-"

"De Burca, Benjamin," Shepard interjected. "The commander's earned her stripes, and isn't an annoying putz."

"Captain..."

Hannah ignored his whine, slipped into the weapons room; then shoved herself toward the group of crewmen gathered around the torpedo tubes. "No-no-no-no, skip the safeties-"

"Captain," Benjamin practically bellowed, "disabling weapons' safeties isn't only against regulations, it's foolish in the extreme."

Shepard's lips broke into a weak smile as she gazed about the gathered crew. "Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but as a deserter who stole a multi-trillion dollar ship to fight a war of independence, I am extremely concerned about upholding Earth Force regulations, and not doing anything foolish. Are you concerned Tomlinson?"

"Yes ma'am," the weapon's officer saluted.

"How about you Davis?"

"I'm sure they'll go easier on us if we follow the rest of their rules Cap," the crewman stiffened to attention.

"Thank you Benny," Hannah lobbed the safety device gently toward the corner, "for once again pointing out what's truly important. Decorum and order in the face of stranger times, but also in the midst of an all or nothing fight for freedom. Learn the lesson kids." She glanced at a reflective surface to check how close to erupting the man was. Pretty damn close. "Lose the safeties, rig for dump fire, and prepare to empty the mag on my order."

"Yes ma'am, Captain Shepard ma'am," everyone in the compartment recited as one.

"Best crew in the system." She launched herself back into the corridor, her two senior officers following close behind. She activated the comm strapped to her shoulder. "Bridge, Shepard, status."

"*The Calypso and the Utopia have responded Cap, they're two and four light seconds away respectively.*"

"Good, confirm that they'll be holding at rally point alpha-kappa."

"*Aye-aye ma'am. Intruder's continuing to hold, and doesn't appear to be aware of our comm traffic."

Hannah closed the channel. "Yeah, sure their not... they just don't care."

"Shepard?" Commander de Burca broke her stone silence. "They may perceive the randomness of our encryption as background noise."

"Oh god," Benjamin scoffed, "don't tell me you're on board with this garbage."

"She's been informed by her commanding officer that she thinks the situation might involve an unknown intelligence," Hannah growled at the man, "and is giving said commanding officer her opinion on the situation as such. Like a competent and able crewmen... Unlike you who thinks it's your job to piss and moan and play devils advocate."

"Captain-"

"Shut up Benny, playtime's over." Shepard pointed at a hatch. "Catherine."

The women flung themselves into the compartment, but before Benjamin could join them, Hannah began shutting the door in his face. "No mouth breather's allowed."

De Burca drifted over to a secured container, gathered her legs in a crossed pose; then pantomimed sitting. "I don't agree with his assessment, but I do agree with the sentiment. You shouldn't be the one going over there, you're too valuable to the ship, to the federation, and to spacer society in general."

"My great-great-whatever-great grandfather, was the second human in space..." Hannah's thought faded into the cool air as she wedged herself into an open locker. "Gram'a was obsessed with him... From the moment I was born, the only time I remember her shutting up about him, was when she died... kept saying he'd changed the course of future history. And she tried her god damnedest for my dad to be the first human born in space. Her contribution to future history, a new race... spacers. Not like we had enough bullshit division amongst us to begin with... she had to create another. But others beat her to it, but it barely mattered to her... because dad was a spacer... and a few decades later, I was too."

She looked over at her friend and first officer. "Alan Shepard wasn't special, or important... Neither was Yuri Gagarin or Buzz Aldrin or any of the other bastards who got to call themselves first. Sputnik was special and important, as was Vostok and Apollo and every other piece of hardware that's allowed mankind to reach beyond themselves, and draw a new line. My gram'a worshipped a man who stood on the shoulders of a hundred thousand nameless people and shouted, 'I'm the tallest,' and we humans, being a few genetic letters away from being chimps, gawked at him in awe and wander, and said, 'you did it'."

Shepard's gaze strayed back down toward the ceiling. "I'm not valuable to the ship Cat, the ship's valuable. And I'm not important to the Federation of Space Stations, or to space born humans, the fact that we gather around each other and share a common society is.

"If this Normandy turns out to be an elite earther ship; then nothing happens, I'm taken prisoner, you make as much noise as possible to draw attention to the situation, and continue on as Damysus' Captain."

"I don't want to be captain Shep," de Burca interrupted.

"It doesn't matter what you want, or I want, or all of humanity wants. Some people, like my ancestor and my grandmother, choose to be part of history, try their damnedest to etch their name upon it... But whether or not a man named Alan Shepard boarded a combustion vomiting vehicle named Mercury or not, sometime around that day, some human would have, and 'some human' would've become the second man in space.

"If I'm taken prisoner, Damysus is still the best hope for everyone who doesn't live on earth, to win their freedom. If Normandy is an alien vessel, then we need to find out why they're here, what they want, and why they want to speak to me specifically. And if it turns out that their intentions are hostile, it won't matter where I am... we're all screwed."

"An alien species would not expend the massive energy needed to travel the exponentially huge distances to get here, just to harass or harm an unimportant race like humans," Catherine reasoned. "If they needed resources, Alpha Centauri has plenty, and is probably completely vacant of life."

"We don't know that for sure, and besides, if I was some other species, and it was humans popping into my solar system, I'd be pissing myself in fear of what they'd do to us. In the twenty-second god damned century, we still have religious missionaries cramming themselves into spacesuits, floating from orbital homestead to homestead, banging on air locks, holding up flyers and proclaiming, 'have you heard the word of our lord and saviour?' Families sold themselves into debt so they could move into space and mine themselves to death to get away from stupid people, coalitions built space stations to do so as well, millionaires spent their fortunes to move to mars to get away from them, Europeans sailed to the new world to escape.... but the morons followed, and they brought their religion, their violence, their ideas of right and wrong, and when someone disagreed with them, they shoved their morals and ideals down other people's throats until the ones who just wanted to get away, choked to death.

"If these are aliens, and they're anything remotely like humans, every organism in this system, is in danger. Hell, they might be here to invite us to an interstellar war, which will be oh so fun, and keep the population under control."

De Burca deadpanned at Shepard. "You don't believe that."

"I've literally heard an admiral propose it Cat." She slipped out of the locker. "I'm assuming you've said everything you need to?" Hannah didn't wait for a reply, but studied the other woman's face intently for any sign of disagreement. "I should go, history awaits, and I've kept Normandy's captain waiting long enough that if they were going to get impatient, they would've done something by now." She unlocked and slid open the door.

"Are you through with your private meeting ma'am," Benjamin groused, arms crossed and waiting for the two to exit.

"It was girl stuff Benny, you wouldn't've understood, you're a dick after all... I mean you have a dick, I always get you two mixed up, you both have unpleasant material spouting from the slits in your business ends."

Almost sixty days of his Captain's constant put downs, being ordered to just accept the entire crew, bridge officers and all, calling him exclusively by his first name, Hannah's never ending superiority... and de Burca... always just floating there, never saying a word, never mentioning to the Captain that her actions might be inappropriate... never doing her goddamn job... was too much for the man to stomach, and latched onto Shepard's arm, intending to confront her with just how unprofessional she was. But the room suddenly began to spin, and de Burca's voice boomed over the ship's speakers.

 

It was the moment she knew was coming, the act of superiority and aggression she saw as inevitable the moment he landed on her ship... The salute he gave when they first met, and wouldn't drop until she threw one back; the instant space invading to grab her hand to greet her the second she had; the flashes of anger he displayed when she didn't go with his recommendations; his snapping at the crew whenever they made a minor mistake... his so far up his own ass attitude... But it could not've come at a worse time.

Benjamin's grip bit into Hannah's bicep, tightening forcefully, the undercurrent of anger throbbing in his cold little fingers, a slight wrenching backward... Shepard propelled herself off the wall, grabbing the sleeve of his uniform as she moved, dragging and turning him around their centre of mass... out of the corner of her eye, de Burca, reached for the intercom.

"Security, compartment sixty-eight, port egress. On the double!"

Hannah curled into a ball, spiking their angular velocity, setting him spinning like a top; then she let him go and flattened out, reaching for a bracer bar with her foot as she went. The sudden change in direction sent her into a wall, but she was ready for it, pushed off with her arms, jack-knifing herself back out at Benjamin. At the same time, Shepard wrapped her legs around the bar, pulling her centre of mass closer to it while throwing her hands out to grab the man's head... yanked it down into the steel securely clamped between her legs.

The compartment rang with a satisfying twang, mixed with an angry growl from Benjamin, but as Hannah moved to take the bastard's throat into her arm, Catherine crashed into her, crushing her into the bulkhead; then immediately pushed off, using Hannah's body as a spring board, and tackled the other officer, locking her arms and legs around his to prevent him from moving.

"Cool it, or she'll kill you."

Security sprayed in, two of them going directly for Benjamin and de Burca, manhandling them into an even bigger, but further subdued meatball; the other two, raced for Shepard, bullied themselves into her way, but otherwise didn't touch her.

"Let him go." Hannah untangled herself from the wall, relaxing back into weightlessness. "If he thinks he can take me, let'him try."

De Burca had other ideas. "First one to let go, gets spaced." She headbutted Benjamin's shoulder blade. "You keep your mouth shut."

"I mean it Catherine. Either Commander Dorcas's ready to get his act together, and really be part of this crew, or he still thinks he knows better than the rest of us, and wants to take a poke at me." When no one moved, Shepard took a deep breath; then roared in her loudest, deepest voice, "do it! Now!"

The four crewmen separated, each reaching out for a handhold, a doorway, anything to further pull themselves away from one another. Benjamin Dorcas floated in the centre of the display, chest heaving, body shaking with the effort not to ball his hands into fists.

"What'll it be Dorcas? This is your only shot to get a fair fight with me, or to get your ass back to your station and try to gain everyone's respect. That uniform and those insignia, only get you so much for free, the rest you earn."

The man's muscles surged, his hands twisted into weapons, and for a moment, it appeared as if he was ready to lunge. But then he snapped a salute. "Permission to return to my station ma'am."

Hannah crossed her arms and stared him down. It took only a few seconds, but he eventually dropped his hand. "Take the bridge... and don't fuck with my chair." As he rushed forward, she shouted down the corridor at him. "And you're on probation Dorcas."

De Burca was glaring daggers at Shepard. "Security, get out." She waited for them to bail as quickly as they'd entered before saying what she needed to. "I'm transferring to Hackett's ship."

"No you're not." Hannah breathed out her tension in a single slow breath. "Besides, Martha won't take you on if I ask her not to."

"People aren't animals Shep, you don't need to break them to get their respect and obedience."

Shepard pulled herself into the corridor, propelling herself forward. "Frankly, I don't give a shit about respect or obedience, but both are necessary evils for the ship to run smoothly. The whole damn crew could act like a bunch of drunken assholes for all I care, just as long as they get their jobs done, and do what they have to."

"Damn it, will you be still and let me talk to you?"

"You're pissed off, I acknowledge that; you don't agree with my command style, I acknowledge that too; and you don't really like my outlook on life, I agree, it's shit... but we both have those aforementioned jobs to do, and we both do them very well, and if I don't come back from this... excursion, you can run the ship however the hell you like."

"Hannah!" Catherine pushed the other woman into an alcove. "You don't have to be an irreverent bitch all the time, you can relax, you can let other people like you."

Shepard gave a small smirk. "Cat... You want to make me a little bit of a better person before I disappear forever."

De Burca shoved Hannah's shoulders hard, pushing herself backward at the same time. "Captain Hackett will take me on, if I tell her I can't live in the same tin can as you anymore." Then turned, and threw herself on.

"Cat, I'm kidding." She took off after the other woman. "Come'on, I know you can take a joke, I'll be back, they can't possibly be as bad as humans."

"Transfer pod, this is de Burca. The Captain will be disembarking now. Have the prep team ready to get her suited."

"Cat, I'm sorry... Will you slow down?"

"No." De Burca's voice was dead cold, her single word final, her punts along the handholds quickening with each push-off.

"*We're ready for you Captain. The um... ship, has an area that opened up near the bow. It's got to be an airlock.*"

"Understood." Shepard tried to catch up to Catherine, but the other woman had gathered too much momentum. "Where are you going?"

"Bridge."

Hannah hung onto where she was instead of letting herself continue flying on. "I don't need this right now." She re-activated her comm. "No weapons, nothing. Empty out the grenade packs and clip pockets. I want to appear as non-threatening as possible."

"*Understood Cap. You want the surveillance rig attached?*"

"*Attach the rig crewman,*" de Burca interrupted, "and lock the transmission open.*"

"*You got it commander, one unmanned meat probe coming up.*"

"I want all stations to be prepared to fire everything we got at this thing and make a run for it." Shepard swung into the transfer pod staging bay. "Our acceleration is the only thing we got on these guys. If it comes down to it, I'm an after thought, forget about me and get to the fleet."

"*Ma'am? It's Lieutenant Riley. I'm not so sure we can outrun it. Our analysis on the ship's mass... ma'am... ma'am it's reading as less dense than hydrogen.*"

Hannah boggled, but it was Benjamin who spoke. "*Nothing's lighter than hydrogen, check it again.*"

"*I have, twenty times. It's estimated equivalent displacement is less than one kilolitre of water.*"

"*That thing should be at minimum, fifty megalitres.*"

The smile on Hannah's lips grew exponentially as she leapt into a pressure suit. "Anyone still think this is an Earth Force ship?"

"I hope they're red Cap," a crewman said as he drifted over a helmet.

"Cute Johnston, but I think your dreams of going with a devil girl, are more like delusions."

"Gotta have hope ma'am."

"*Captain?*" Riley continued. "*We also think we know what that structure on its nose is. We think it's a weapon ma'am. There's a discolouration around the inside... it's reading as element two-oh-four.*"

Shepard rested her head against the entrance to the pod. "Element two-zero-four practically doesn't exist... Anything over one-seventy is barely even theoretical, and anything over one-ten exists for such a short period of time, it can barely be detected."

"*I know ma'am... unless something powerful enough creates a large mass of them that they exist long enough to... exist.*"

"How much energy would it take to fuse an element like that together?"

"*Mathematically, I don't know, the computer doesn't have any models to plug data into... Practically... I'm not sure even black holes colliding could create anything like it.*"

"*Ma'am,*" Dorcas began, "*I recommend we execute an escape course immediately.*"

"No. It's here, it's not being threatening, and just because something has the ability to eradicate every living thing in the system, doesn't mean it will."

The comm remained silent for a long, pregnant moment. "*If we're staying ma'am, I suggest we warn our other ships away."

"Agreed. De Burca, flash traffic, our operational area is code red quarantine... And if they lose contact with us." Hannah's eyes wandered over the bay. "I dunno, tell them to kiss their own asses goodbye."

"*Shep,*" Catherine's voice hesitated. "*Captain, would you like to take a flash vest with you?*"

Hannah sealed herself into the suit's helmet. "Nope. There's no guarantee that a radiation burst strong enough to kill all of us in here, would do anything to any of them over there. It might just piss them off."

"She's ready to splash black Cap." The pod prep crewman snapped her harness into place. 

"Wait." Shepard undid the locking ring around her neck, reached in, and pulled out her ident tags. "If I don't come back, give these to commander de Burca. She'll know what to do with them."

"Yes ma'am. Hey, if you die ma'am? Do I get a promotion too?"

"Suck vacuum Johnston. Now vacate."

It took four or five minutes for the pod bay's inner-door to close, the air to be pumped into the rest of the ship, and for the outer door to open, and while the sequence carried on, Hannah wondered if the aliens could sense them occurring. Could they somehow see her climbing into the transfer pod? Did they have a way of determining the pressure within the bay? Could they read her heartbeat?

"*Pod one, Damysus, you're go for launch.*"

Stuffed into a pressure suit, strapped to a seat with thrusters bolted on...... utterly isolated... the endless desolate beauty of the universe stretching on into infinity before her... They made what she was about to do, land at the bottom of her stomach with a thud. These were probably aliens, they somehow knew her... Could they read her mind? Claustrophobia set in, blind panic scratched at her eyes.

"Understood, thrusting forward."

This had to be the dumbest thing Hannah had ever done. They probably weren't aliens, they were probably earthers with some super high level technology, they'd read her file, heard the rumours that she let some of her crew sneak pets aboard...

"*Turn left three-one-eight.*"

"Understood. I think I can see the airlock. About four fifths the way toward the bow?"

"*That's afirm Shepard. There doesn't appear to be any grapples. You'll have to use station keeping.*"

"Understood."

Suicide... that's what this was... Aliens who could read her mind, or eathers testing to see how much they could get away with... She was insane... she should've sent a lackey, or insisted they met on her ship... Her grandmother wanted to be the first woman to give birth to a spacer... well Hannah dreamed of being the first to meet aliens... everything she'd said to Catherine... bullshit, utter bullshit... Mostly bullshit, she really did believe the technology and the nameless many were more important than the hero, but god, she really wanted to meet aliens. Would they look human? Like blobs? Would the whole ship be filled with water and they breathed threw gills?

Shepard slowed the pod, stopping two or three meters from the entrance. "Damysus, Pod one. I'm alongside and on station."

Damn it, she sounded like a first year ensign. Whenever shit hit the fan, or she became nervous, her training kicked in, she stopped being the cool CO who let shit slide and got into physical fights with subordinates to prove points... She'd found herself almost discharged dozens of times, but somehow, something always saved her ass, and her performance under pressure always seemed to make up for her more absurd behaviour... now she's the most famous Captain in the FSS fleet... in the system... Luck oozed from her pores... jewels of chance fell into her lap... and she was ready to throw all that away for the slimmest of possibilities of meeting aliens? She was ready to walk into her death? Surrender any fight what-so-ever, just to exist in the same space as a non-human? Fuck was she stupid.

"I'm unlocking and jumping over."

"*Understood. We'll be monitoring.*"

The leap felt wrong, she should've only given herself enough of a push off to grab the door frame, instead, she found herself drifting all the way inside.

"Damysus, is she moving?"

"*Negative Captain, she's holding solid... a little too solid.*"

Hannah's feet touched the floor, the weight of the suit starting to become apparent... another flash of panic and excitement.

"They have artificial gravity, repeat, they have gravity."

"*Captain, Riley here. Can you tell how much? From what direction?*"

Shepard bounced slightly. "It's increasing slowly... And I think it's evenly distributed across the entire deck..." She froze as a light hit her face. "Stand by."

"Decontamination in progress..."

"Damysus," Hannah flinch backward, her hand impacting a closed door, "they've penetrated our comms."

"*Negative Captain, we're reading it as being picked up by your mic.*"

She waved her arms around, blocking the light.

"De--- nation--- progress."

"They're using some kind of beam to make the sound using my helmet as a resonator." She wondered what it'd do if it hit her bare head.

"Decontamination in progress..."

Hannah rolled her eyes. "I heard you the first time..."

"Equalizing interior pressure..."

The inner door opened, and Shepard felt her heart physically sink... A fully human woman was standing front and centre... Hannah was dead, they were all captured... the fight for independence was lost... and there were no aliens... she just wanted the bitch to shoot her in the head.

A moment of shock exploded in her chest at how soul crushing the disappointment felt, she really did want to float away and die, freeze solid in the unforgiving vacuum of space. The woman looked the spitting image of de Burca's little sister, except with cherry red hair, freckles, and the build of someone you wouldn't screw with... Reminded her of her mom. The guy to her left was ruggedly attractive, and looked like he'd seen some heavy active duty, but the woman to her right was way too clean and made up to be anything more than a career yeoman.

"*Shepard?*"

The next in line wore a soft, welcoming expression, her face slightly alight, like she was meeting an old friend... A light dusting of freckles under her eyes...

"*Shep?*"

She looked far too young to be an officer, far too open and vulnerable to be standing face to face with the enemy... someone your CO was probably about to kill...

"*Hannah...*"

But there was a sadness behind her eyes, a lost, wistful longing... and an intelligent mind, observing, analyzing...

"*Captain Shepard! Respond Immediately!*"

Her blue stained skin looked natural, not at all freakish... her lack of ears... thick fingers of ruff scaly flesh reaching around behind her head... thin purple scab streaking down her temple...

Hannah's chest felt hollow, her eyes had grown so wide they almost hurt, her heart fluttered, her breath stuttered, she felt weightless again. She opened her mouth to say something prophetic, one of the millions of speeches she imagined delivering as a child. Something as profound as what Neil Armstrong had said.

"Hi."


	3. Expectations

"*Understood. I think I can see the airlock. About four fifths the way toward the bow?*"

"We've locked onto their codes ma'am."

Shepard nodded, absently acknowledging Traynor's report, but her mind drifted along in a surging sea of memories... Admiral Anderson called this entire era, the wild west of space exploration, and Hannah, its Wyatt Earp. Others described her as a peacekeeper, brutal, just one of the crew, irreverent, the greatest commander you could ever have, the bitch of space... She'd relentlessly hunted the turians down during the first contact war, then got screaming drunk with a group of Primarchs after the treaty signing... held an office for parliamentary representative for less than forty-eight hours... took the blame for killing an Alliance ambassador... She'd been entangled in millions of pieces of human history, but Jane never knew that woman, the living legend, the hero of the Station Wars, she grew up isolated from the people who might've reminisced about such things...

"*That's afirm Shepard. There doesn't appear to be any grapples. You'll have to use station keeping.*"

"*Understood.*"

A giddy warmth blossomed in the Commander's chest... Hannah's crew called her Shepard, just like Jane's crew called her...

She shook her head, attempting to dislodge the loonacy from her mind. Of course they did, most military personnel called each other by their surnames, and Jane already knew others thought of her grandmother by that name, she'd heard every single Alliance officer older than herself refer to her as such...

A dose of cold reality splashed over Jane's face. Would that once again become her reality? Would she lose her name? Would the name Shepard be usurped out from under the commander who'd inherited it? Earned it?

Ridiculous... they were the same age, they were both fighting wars, both respected and trusted by their crews, both earned their positions... But only Jane's crew knew their Commander existed... and Hannah was a higher rank...

Liara's hand rested on Shepard's shoulder, a strong discreet meld forming between them... Living in the shadow of the greatness that was Admiral Shepard, and Matriarch Benezia, was consuming, passively belittling... frustrating. They at once admired their parent, while at the same time resented them... appreciated them, while wishing they would vanish... then when they had...

Realization struck the pair. If all that was occurring, was as it seemed, Benezia would also be alive...

'And if our calculations of Sol's planetary positions are right, another you also exists,' Shepard reasoned.

Another Liara... how would they deal with this... how could two individuals with the same identity co-exist...

'Just treat her like a sister.'

The thought was less of a statement, but not quite a question, or a suggestion... more of a reaction. They looked to one another as Liara replied. 'Perhaps you should do the same.'

'This isn't comparable Hunny, she's my grandmother, not another me.'

'Perhaps in actual fact my Love, or in your respective parentage, but from what I've learned of this woman, I believe I would be as drawn to her, as I am to you.'

Shepard rolled her eyes as they sought the airlock... That was the most unhelpful statement in the universe, and probably the third worse joke she'd ever heard the Asari make. But the humour radiating from Liara, and how the comment was contrived to help the Maiden cope with her own anxiety, made Shepard feel a little better, calmer... less alone.

"*I'm unlocking and jumping over.*"

"*Understood. We'll be monitoring.*"

"Bring the gravity up slowly," the Commander ordered to no one in particular, "she won't be expecting it, and probably won't orient herself correctly."

"*Damysus, is she moving?*"

"*Negative Captain, she's holding solid... a little too solid.*"

On the monitor, Hannah's body naturally yawed, bringing her feet perpendicular with the growing force, eventually allowing them to softly meet the deck.

"*They have artificial gravity, repeat, they have gravity.*"

"You can bring it up more quickly now, I doubt she'll end up flat on her face."

"Understood Commander."

"Decontamination in progress..."

"*Damysus, they've penetrated our comms.*"

"*Negative Captain, we're reading it as being picked up by your mic.*"

The sense of dread returned... Jane was a commander... Hannah was a captain... but if they were going to save the future, Captain Shepard needed to obey Commander Shepard's orders, trust her judgment, defer to her on her knowledge of non-humans and their cultures... But how likely was that to happen? Was all this going to be a huge mess? And why hadn't she considered all this before this point? Had she been blinded by the thought of seeing her grandmother again? A woman who was just as wilful, just as skilful as herself, but often described as being as dangerous as a literal loose cannon... Shepard could almost hear Admiral Hackett's advice whispering into the ether of timelessness: 'careful of those who can lead their crews proudly into death'.

"Decontamination in progress..."

"*I heard you the first time.*"

The terse, irritated criticism garnered a stifled chuckle from Jane, Hannah had often been prone to mocking computers, standardized responses, and regimented reactions...

When admiral Hackett had informed Jane of her grandmother's death, it'd crushed her utterly. She did her job, ate her meals, filed her reports, but for what felt like forever, socializing with crewmates was unappealing, space seemed like nothing more than a vast emptiness, and friends were just people she knew...

Growing up in the abandon, doing whatever needed to be done to survive... Then out of nowhere, someone with the same name as the one embroidered on the baby clothes she'd been found in, the only name she'd ever gone by, showed up, and pulled her out of abject misery... out of being ignored by all of humanity...

On the first night of what became her new life, Shepard had developed an infection. A simple bacteria born from a century of concerted sterility, one that existed on every human occupied ship and station in the galaxy, but completely unable to exist on a planet, took advantage of Shepard's uninoculated body. It filled her stomach, her intestines, it stabbed at her insides like shards of glass... it made her wish that the old woman with her name, had never taken her away from what she'd come to understand... what she could defend against... After being treated, but while still suffering from fever and mind-numbing pain... the old woman held her... and for no other reason then to give Jane comfort...

Above the turbulent flotsam of memories, and standing a bare meter from the woman occupying her thoughts, Shepard could almost feel her grandmother's arms tightening around her shoulders... hear her words... 'Relax girl, everything'll be alright. Tomorrow, you'll wake up, you'll feel better, I promise. And if I'm lying, my side arm's on the table over there, you can shoot me for it...' 

"Equalizing to interior pressure..."

Panic crawled over Shepard's skin. Would she recognize the woman on the other side of the hatch? Would her youth and vitality make her a completely different person? Her old friends had labelled her bombastic, given to extremes... but Jane thought of her as caring, giving beyond reason... someone she'd fallen utterly in love with within a few short weeks... Had those traits come from age? Would she despise a Hannah Shepard in her prime?

The inner airlock parted, revealing a slightly varied mirror of Shepard's self... Her heart began to flutter... The inconsistencies screamed... No long white blond hair, it was wild, copper red, barely regulation... No harshly etched lines flanking piercing eyes, instead, smooth elastic skin... No lightly hinted freckles, in their place, a bold smattering of dots... But the same, strong, jawline was there, the same long neck, the same analyzing glare, the same passive mouth...

Hannah looked Shepard up and down, dismissed her completely, moved on to Alenko... then smirked at him... cocked her hip ever so slightly... gave him a second, more intensive scan...

The flutter imploded into a vacuum, into a hollow void sitting at the top of her abdomen. Hannah would of course have no way of knowing who or what Shepard was to her... but the other woman finding nothing familiar in Jane's features, her casually throwing 'the look' at Kaidan instead of wondering who this person who appeared so much like herself was, hurt... and hurt far more than Jane believed it should. She'd hoped something would pass between them, that some unknown thing would transcend time and reality and bring the realization of how important they were to one another, to Hannah...

Shepard's self-pity evaporated instantly as Hannah took a step back, something resembling shock exploding over her face... the sound of someone yelling at her coming through her thick helmet... Jane thought the other woman might bolt, try to escape, but Hannah opened her mouth, her breath catching in nervous, micro stutters.

"Hi."

Liara returned the awed stare with a full and joyous smile. "Pleasurable welcome."

Consternation grew as Shepard watched her grandmother melt before her Bondmate, an absurd, mindless grin spreading over her lips... The woman who'd come to mean so much to her, as unrecognizable as the first day they'd met... She needed to gain control of the situation before it spiralled further into something she wasn't prepared for.

She did the first thing that came to mind, and snapped a crisp salute. "Captain."

Automatically, Hannah threw one back. "Captain." But before her attention could return to the blue alien, standing there in all its glory, she caught the barest twitch of a smirk around the other human's mouth... The bitch had just won something, and she knew it. "Why're humans aboard an alien space ship," she demanded.

"Ma'am." Jane hesitated, debating with herself how much to dump on her grandmother all at once. She took a steadying breath. "This is a Systems Alliance ship ma'am, a human built ship."

Hannah's entire face lit up, her body surging with energy. "Is earth a lost colony? Are there more of us out there? Are we... are we part of a galactic community? Are you here to bring us back into the fold?"

The exuberance, the brilliant glow of anticipation, her entire demeanour, made Hannah appear even younger to Shepard's eye... it reminded her of Liara... or at least the Young Maiden she'd known before her own death...

The first contact war... that's what must've changed the idealistic woman standing before her now. Shepard couldn't remember a time when Hannah had anything positive to say about human's contact with aliens. She often spat vitriol while proclaiming that they should never have left their own system, and insisted that a first contact had been destined to be disastrous. She'd blamed the war on everyone: the turians for being too rigid in their application of citadel law, the first Alliance ship involved for firing back instead of surrendering immediately, and the counsel for not placing markers everywhere in every language explaining the current stellar-political landscape... The thought made Shepard's heart break for the woman she knew... and for what she was about to do to the woman she would inevitably come to know.

"It's a little more complicated than that Captain," Shepard stalled as she began gesturing to her officers. "This is Major Kaidan Alenko... Lieutenant-Commander Ashley Williams... They're both my first and second officer... We're Spectres ma'am." Jane drifted into momentary silence. "It's complicated."

Hannah nodded, her passive attentiveness unnerving the Commander further.

"This," Shepard continued, placing a hand at the small of her Bondmate's back, "is Liara T'Soni, doctor of archaeology and ship's information officer. Her species call themselves asari."

The Maiden gave a shallow nod. "Agreeable meeting daughter of Shepard Captain."

Jane stifled a grimace at her Bondmate's perfectly spoken, but horribly worded Alliance Standard. "We'll get you a comm." She moved to Garrus, and felt a twinge of concern as Hannah flinched. "This is Officer Garrus Vakarian, gunnery officer. His species is called turian."

"Captain." He bowed his head respectfully.

A renewed energy surged through Hannah. "Is that your language? It sounds mechanical instead of vocal. Do you vocalize through a syrinx? A kind of internalized stridulation?"

"I, um," Garrus stammered.

The Commander drew focus back to herself. "We'll get you full documentation on every species' anatomy ma'am." She stepped behind Tali. "This is Admiral Tali'Zorah, guest engineer, and member of the Admiralty Board of the Quarian Flotilla."

"Former," the Young Woman corrected. "I'm sure my title won't be recognized in this time. And I'm not speaking Alliance Standard," she continued babbling nervously, "I'm Quarian, and we have to wear these suits because of our immunity, kind of like human spacers, and I can install translation programs into my suit's intercom-"

"Tali," Shepard warned gently. "There are more than a dozen more sapient species, that we know of, in the galaxy. Most are bipedal, most are roughly shaped the same, and for the most part, we get along."

Hannah did little more than confirm she was listening.

Jane swallowed. Postponing the inevitable was pointless, she had to explain everything to her grandmother at some point... doing it later wouldn't make it any easier. "There's some things we need to discuss-"

"I understand," the other Shepard interrupted, her features bursting with intent, "informing the rest of the System will cause chaos. We're in a state of war, and your meeting with me, and by default, my side, first... It will be seen as a tacit endorsement of our cause, even if that's not your intention." Hannah paused as she forced herself to relax. "I'm sure we probably don't have very much in common with one another, you're probably far more advanced intellectually as well as morally, but we're both humans, and you must know what humanity is capable of, when we think we might lose."

"I do," the Commander lamented, somewhat bitterly, "but your conflict with earth isn't the most important issue-"

"I understand, but we in the Sol System are barbaric, chaotic, and more concerned with bullshit, than how to better ourselves and support and accept the entire species. Our politicians, on both sides, are a bunch of corrupt ideologues. And the Admiralty? Most are more interested in playing with their toys than actually creating a lasting peace. If left to our own devices, we will kill a huge number of ourselves, and injure about ten times more. But now, with your arrival, and your impenetrable ship, if you do nothing, the earthers will become even more committed to crushing the spacer movement... And they'll use your arrival as an excuse to implement tactics which would otherwise be prohibited."

"We can't just pick sides, and there are larger concerns-"

"It doesn't matter what you want," Hannah cut her off. "Or what *I* want, or whatever galactic union you all belong to wants..." She gestured vaguely toward the airlock. "There are humans out there who don't give a god damn what this moment means to the solar system, they will take this opportunity to create even more of a mess, deepen divisions, and try to force their wills on others through any means necessary. And the worst part, most of us here in the Sol System, are complete morons who'll swallow other people's poison as if it was ambrosia... You have no choice, you have to pick a side, or get lost until we're through killing each other."

"I can't just leave, our presence here has already caused contamination, and I won't pick sides, because I will not be responsible for the deaths of people who should've otherwise survived."

"Predestination is a pathetic excuse for the wilfully impotent."

"This isn't about destiny." Shepard clasped her forehead, squeezing her temples between her thumb and fingers. "We're from the future."

Hannah's expression began to cool.

"We think we were thrown back in time by the energy of a super nova entering our massless corridor as we travelled to earth... But the reason doesn't matter, we're here now, and we can't just put ourselves into stasis and wait to catch up with our original time frame. We've already nudged future history into a different direction, and we'll have to live in whatever reality we've created with our existence."

The woman's words hung as De Burca listened from her side of Hannah's comm. Normandy could crush Damysus with a literal belly flop to their hull, and if ordered, the crew would impale themselves on their opponent's spear, sacrificing themselves for no other reason, than to demonstrate to the rest of humanity what this alien vessel was capable of. But god help her, Catherine didn't think that was remotely necessary... She believed this woman... There was something in her voice... Desperation... Sycophantic politeness... The field of view on Shep's camera was limited, but what she saw, spoke to her of a bunch of officers trying to deal with an ornery and reactive high ranker. She could be wrong, a million other happenstances could be just as likely...

"But it also presents us with an opportunity," Jane continued, trying hard to ignore her grandmother's rapidly freezing glare. "The time we left, the galaxy was at war, and we were losing. Earth, all the homeworlds, they'd been invaded, the galactic population was estimated to have been reduced by three quarters, and most of our fleets, were decimated. We were running out of time... and we had only a single all or nothing long shot to try to shift the momentum baring down on us. But here, in this now, we have decades to prepare... and we have invaluable intel..."

Shepard waned into silence... Hannah wasn't believing her... that unwavering icy stare... a gnawing ball of anxiety... chills... directionless fear... Jane felt as if she were fifteen years old all over again, standing in her grandmother's quarters, in trouble for the first time since being rescued. She'd tried so hard to follow the rules, to not get mad, to keep ahold of and cherish everything this woman who shared her name gave to her... to be deserving of the trust she'd placed in her... She had believed everything would be taken away, that Hannah would throw her back into the Abandon... But that hadn't happened, the older woman had stared at her for what felt like an hour, peering into her soul; then calmly recited the incident report from memory, even though it'd been written less than a few minutes beforehand... Then equally as evenly, but balanced on some unknown emotional knife's edge, she explained why what Jane did was wrong, why not to do it again, and what she should learn from the experience. It'd been like listening to someone utter the nicest of death threats.

"*I believe her.*"

It was Hannah's first officer repeated over Normandy's comms, but the Captain gave no indication that anyone had said a word to her, even though Shepard was sure her grandmother felt certain that Normandy was listening in... She just continued focusing on Jane... her breathing deep and even... her blinking sharp and sporadic...

"I'm not doing this." The Commander broke away from the frightsome glare... this confrontation was getting them nowhere. She turned to make her way to the dais on the galaxy map. "Adams, Commander, I want best speed to Charon. Joker, plot and execute."

"Commander, Adams. We have less than point two moles ma'am, FTL is out."

"We have enough for sub-light bursts," she countered.

"Shepard!"

Cold confusion rippled through the Commander's body... She'd ordered her crew not to use her name until she'd broken the news of their relation to her grandmother... Liara was the last person she'd expect to forget or ignore that... But she found herself completely unable to look to the Maiden... she felt locked in place... the cold mutating into a hot sting.

Hannah was not going to be taken alive. The Federation might be fucked by these... whoever these people were, a handful of alien bandits brainwashed by Earth force... Hannah Shepard would not live to see whatever they were planning come to fruition, and she wasn't going to die without taking at least one of them with her. She grabbed the screwdriver from her suit's maintenance pouch; then drove it as hard as she could into the Redhead's side, pushing as hard as she could to reach as many organs as possible.

For the briefest of moments, Liara mourned the innocent maiden who existed when she first met Commander Shepard. If she had witnessed such a display prior to Therum, she would have felt shock, and would have been frightened into non-action... perhaps she would have rushed to the woman's side to assist her... As Shepard's bondmate, she felt powerful, dangerous, and hardened to the cruelty of the universe... She was a protector... a shepherd. Normandy had done nothing to harm or threaten this woman, nothing to justify such an attack, the second unprovoked one in a matter of minutes. It enraged her, drove her biotics to manifest the terrible violence she felt into physical form... As Shepard's bondmate, she could not allow such injustices as this to exist...


	4. Chapter 4

Damysus' decks rang with the trill howl of her systems pushing their limits, the inescapable sound permeating every section, every compartment, and every crew member's skull. It was as if the harmonics were being generated from the great maw of a living entity, the restrained scream bespeaking the ship's mood and disposition. On this day, she was annoyed, and tired, and frustrated with a chase that'd lasted almost three weeks. De Burca, strapped into the command chair on the bridge, a position she'd taken every day since Normandy took off, shared the sentiment.

Before them, nothing but the minuscule speck of Pluto, so small and so far away that it didn't bother growing in the distance. Behind them, half of both fleets, streaming to catch up, and failing miserably at doing so. Damysus had been the fastest in the Sol system before that Normandy ship showed up, able to give her crew a full earth's G in acceleration pretty much indefinitely. Compared to the alien vessel however, she might as well be standing still. Normandy accelerated so quickly, that her running lights no longer shone in the visible spectrum, they vomited out faint trails of gamma radiation that burned an odd wake across the empty sea of black.

The moment just prior to their target disappearing in a literal puff of EM smoke, de Burca had watched Shep being nearly crushed to death by the Blue Alien using some kind of biologically generated artificial gravity. The force had been so strong, so violent, that it shattered the Captain's helmet and destroyed her bio-sensors. Benji tried to stick his useless dick between his legs and order the crew to retreat, but Shepard's people did exactly what she'd want them to do, and ignored the idiotic order she'd never agree with. Catherine, for her part, did little better, ordering all warheads to be armed and Damysus be rammed down Normandy's throat. It would've been futile, a dying breath spat at Shep's sudden whale, an equally idiotic order the Captain would've posthumously congratulated her crew for carrying out, but the aliens prevented their useless sacrifice by speeding away so quickly, light itself appeared to skip along with them.

Less than a half hour later, Captain Shepard's bio- sensors suddenly started working again. They reported her vitals as precarious, but holding on. Another half hour after that, the Pluto Unmanned Listening Station transmitted a recording of the Normandy entering orbit. A few minutes later, a sudden burst of energy so strong, that its signature and light were witnessed throughout the system. Then observatories reported Styx and Nix being thrown from the Pluto system at incredible speed, and that Charon was glowing brighter than it had any reasonable right to. Ships from both sides were ordered to divert, to reach the aliens before the other did, but Damysus was a full week ahead of any of them, and now, only hours away from Pluto.

Over the course of the weeks, Normandy had remained silent, visible for all to see from the PULS' transmissions, but ignoring the innumerous messages sent to them by everyone and anyone in the System. With the exception of one thing: They filed properly formatted and encoded medical reports on Shepard's condition directly into the Federation's information network. If they were lying, they were being consistent about it. But something in the pit of de Burka's stomach, told her that they weren't, that they were being completely honest.

Catherine unclipped from the command chair to stand upright on the deck, the perception of gravity coming from their current deceleration curve. What her plan was when they reached Normandy, she had no idea. She felt as though the human aliens might be waiting for Damysus, and their reports said that Shepard would be permitted to awaken around the time of their arrival. But what was their plan? And what the hell was happening with Charon? Scans from PULS showed it was getting steadily warmer and brighter, and that it was outguessing huge amounts of its mass. Were they causing the phenomenon by projecting something at it, or was it something coming from within the moon itself?

She nodded sharply at Riley as she walked off the bridge, giving her command. The kid needed confidence as well as the raw experience of being in charge of a ship, and if she believed Normandy's captain and her tail of galactic war, they'd probably need people like Riley, even if all she did was run supplies. But what would a galactic war look like? Would battles be constrained to populated systems? Did they have scanning capabilities that'd allow them to chase ships into deep space? And how large would a population become without the constraints placed upon it by a planet? Could a species eventually reach a trillion members?

In her quarters, Conan was resting comfortably. He was more than use to micro-gravity, but was much happier when he could actually lounge around on the bed or desk. Catherine handed him a treat before moving to feed Aegaeon, who was being temperamental. Unlike Conan, Aegaeon preferred not being encumbered by direction.

De Burka stretched out onto her bed, contemplating, and not for the first time, how this upcoming confrontation with Normandy would play out. Shep would no doubt be hopping mad, spraying venom at anyone who'd speak to her. If she could, she might even order Damysus to ram them. But Catherine had already decided to disobey such orders, and her hints to the admiralty of this, had returned notions of support. Spies embedded within Earth Force, reported that they were fully prepared to suck up to the aliens harder than vacuum. There seemed to be an unspoken agreement by all parties, at least in principle, that vassalage would be preferable to annihilation, even if no one seemed to be taking, 'we're from the future,' especially seriously. And despite the utter lack of reason, Catherine couldn't shake the feeling that concerns of such servitude, were completely unnecessary. She felt that whatever anyone thought this galactic war would entail, would be much worse, but also that no one from Normandy was a threat.

She grabbed the latest medical report for Shepard. The form was filled out in its entirety, attending physician: Chakwas, Hannah's rank: Admiral, date of death: November 16, 2180 - sixty-four years in the future, last command: SSV Olympus. It even had a list of every treatment Hannah'd ever received, and all the ones to date, were accurate. It looked like a typical medical report a CMO would send to a person's assignment, except that the family relationship section was blank. De Burka had already decided that someone aboard their ship was related to Shep, and that they wanted to keep that information to themselves, at least for the time being.

Switching over to the recording from the Captain's suit, she once again scrutinized the image of their commanding officer. Catherine was almost ready to commit herself into believing that that person was related to Hannah. They both had red hair, which was a recessive trait. Sure, someone could alter their genes to give themselves or child a specific colouring, but few people in the present chose red. Maybe in the future, there could be a trend toward that colour, but no one else on the recording had red hair. Nor did they have green eyes, which was also recessive. Then there was the woman's apparent nervousness, and a seeming need to have Shepard believe her. Until she decided Hannah wouldn't listen to her at all; then a harden commitment to some plan took over. She also got the impression that this person could be just as stubborn, just as quick to judge as Shepard.

But there were other traits Catherine wouldn't expect from a descendant of the great Captain Shepard. Hannah's voice almost always carried a hard edge, where this person was somewhat softer spoken; The Captain's eyes nearly constantly looked angry, this person's appeared concerned; Shepard usually stood tall, shoulders back, head held high, the other woman held herself more diminutively, not necessarily shrinking away, but more relaxed, open... friendly. It was obvious her people respected her, their eyes kept darting to her whenever anyone spoke, looking to see what her reaction would be, exactly like those around Shepard, but there didn't seem to be the same reverence, the same blind devotion. Catherine had almost nothing to go on, but something told her that this woman was the complete opposite to Shepard.

Sixty years would be about the right time for this woman to be Shep's grand, or great-granddaughter. But to fall out of time, to accidentally land right in front of your grandparent's ship? It was implausible in the extreme... unless someone or something controlled the encounter, wanted them to collide on one another's doorstep. But why now? Five years ago, humanity wouldn't have been at its own throat, five years later, the dust could've already settled.

Conan bullied his way under de Burca's tablet and into her face, purring for all he was worth. She began gently stroking his head and back, Shepard really didn't pay enough attention to the poor thing.

 

Distant...

'Take command kid...'

Isolated...

'The sim'll begin in a few minutes...'

Shadowed...

'Ship closing, zero-one-zero...'

Confusion...

'Get it together kid...'

A hand on her shoulder...

'All ahead flank, lead their track...'

Fingernails digging into her skin...

'You've lost kid...'

Her Grandmother's face...

'Learn from your mistakes...'

A flash of light... Pain... A blood covered fist...

Thrashing...

'No...'

'Learn from your mistakes...'

'Please...'

Searing...

'Learn from your mistakes...'

Panting...

Wetness...

'Learn from your mistakes...'

Tapping on her face...

'Learn from your mistakes...'

Cooing...

Shepard jolted from her pillow, the vacant still of her darkened quarters a stark contrast to her chaotic nightmare. It'd begun as a memory, bridge training on her Grandmother's ship. But when she'd failed to intercept the imaginary raiders, instead of a pat on the shoulder and some good advice, her Grandmother pulled her from the command chair... and drove a knife into her belly...

Her eyes closed on their own volition. Not once, in the short time she'd lived with Hannah, had her Grandmother did or said anything remotely violent toward her, but since the confrontation, her every dream, had become a stress induced reflection on any incident where she had felt her Grandmother's suppressed anger.

A slightly wet pat to her face sent Shepard's body into another involuntary spasm. Clucker, Liara's pet from when she lived on Illium, was pecking at the Commander's cheek, no doubt an attempt to distract her from her unpleasant emotions. Like most Thessian species, Clucker had telepathic abilities, and had probably shared in Shepard's terrible nightmare.

She scooped the animal into a loose hug as she rolled over onto her side. "I'm awake."

"Play," the translator interpreted Clucker's vocalizations.

"No play, rest."

"Play."

Groaning, Shepard hugged a little tighter... Akuze had probably been the worst thing she'd ever experienced until fate sent her on a collision course into her Grandmother. She'd watched as friends and colleagues literally melted away into vapour and ooze from thresher maw acid... she'd barely escaped the attack with third degree burns over most of her left side... spent days lying on a concrete slab exposed to the elements, waiting for death or rescue... But she'd survived, digested the event as part of her new reality, and moved on with her life. She still carried scars, both mental and physical, but the immediacy of her panic evaporated once the thresher maws took off, and the anguish of facing possible death dissipated after she'd been recovered... Her Grandmother's attack however...

Being a Reser of the Abandon; then and a soldier in the Alliance, Shepard'd witnessed violence and death the whole of her life. But what one soon comes to realize when you compare reality to the fictionalization of vids and books, is that even when a person wants to kill another, is intent upon it, or when they're fighting to save themselves, the drive, the need, the ethereal compulsion to end another person's life, dissipates like smoke the instant a seemingly critical blow is landed. There were plenty of times when she'd seen the aftermath of a murder of passion, where the victim was stabbed or shot or bludgeoned repeatedly... But those acts had less to do with ending the person's life, than taking one's anger out on a now inanimate object. The commitment, the single-minded application of an action, to inflict as much injury as possible, to as many vital areas of another living being as possible, is rare. Never in her career as an officer, and only a bare few times in the Abandon, had Shepard witnessed such... cold psychopathic resolve... until her own Grandmother tried to kill her.

She hadn't remained conscious long enough to take in all that had occurred... she didn't even remember feeling pain in the moment... only herself telling Liara to stop, to let Hannah go... But when she awoke, more than five days later, and learned about the brutality her body suffered at the hands of her Grandmother...

In her mind's eye, she could see the screwdriver piercing her skin, the tip being driven through her intestines, ripping through her spleen and liver; then being shoved the final few centimetres into her lung by the heel of a disembodied hand... The strength applied... the commitment needed... to force a much larger handle through a millimetres thick shaft...

A void formed at the top of Shepard's chest, a sucking emptiness that threatened to swallow every positive emotion... She tightly shut her eyes to it, squeezing as hard as she could to drive away the unpleasant sensation. A million little moments in her past suddenly made sense... Hannah's close friends and colleagues regularly asking Jane if she was alright, and how /Shepard/ was treating her, asking, even after years, if the Admiral was adapting well to parenthood... Doctor Chakwas and Barlow's more frequent than necessary medical exams... Shepard's mother had been raised by a surrogate while Hannah continued her career, almost as if she'd been a goal to cross off a list, and had very little appreciable parenting by the elder Shepard... For all intents and purposes, Jane had been her first child... and everyone who'd known Hannah, had been, at least somewhat, concerned...

Shepard struggled backward, her hands remaining securely on Clucker as she brought herself into a sitting position against the wall. She needed to put all this out of her mind, she needed to stop obsessing. This Hannah Shepard was not her Grandmother... her Grandmother would never hurt her...

Focusing, Jane banished the stray thought from her mind. This Hannah Shepard was not her Grandmother, she was a version some half a century younger, devoid of the experiences the woman she'd known: She hadn't won the independence of a people, given birth to a child, lost that child along with her granddaughter, lived in a multi-species environment, had authority over half the fleet, witnessed friends succumb to age... and had been reunited with the only living family she had left...

"Shepard, Traynor," Samantha hesitated before awkwardly continuing. "Commander, the Damysus is hailing... They're asking for Commander Shepard ma'am."

"Continue ignoring them until-"

"No ma'am," Sam interrupted, "they're asking for *Commander* Shepard. I think they're asking for you ma'am."

"Me?" Were they baiting? Was there something in the medical reports that had identified her? Was she curious enough to alter her plan before they were ready to awake Hannah? "What's the status on the relay?"

"Nearly two-hundred and fifty trillion kilograms of mass has out-gassed into space, and the relay itself is almost fifty percent uncovered. But I estimate it'll need an additional five days before we can safely travel to Arcturus."

Hannah's first officer said she believed Jane. That might have changed, but an ally on her Grandmother's side might go a long way to getting her to trust them. "Put them on standby, I'll take it here."

"Yes ma'am."

Shepard plopped Clucker down into her pool in the bathroom before opening the comm. The woman who appeared on screen, had dirty blonde hair, almost non-existent eyebrows, and was obviously tiny, despite the chair she was seated in being the only real comparison to her possible stature.

"You are a Shepard," she said flatly, no hint of question or statement in her voice.

Jane nodded, "I am. How did you figure it out?"

"What is your relationship to Hannah?"

"I'm her granddaughter."

"Is she alive?"

"The medical reports we've been sending you are completely accurate."

"You said her."

Shepard boggled. De Burca was one of the few people her Grandmother truly reminisced over, and the stories she painted were of a woman of super human capabilities. Speaking to her now, Jane would describe her as awkward and autistic. "What exactly are you referring to?"

"In your first transmission: 'In your first officer's quarters, right next to the warning you issue every fifteen days to her for having a pet aboard.'"

"Aren't you her first officer?"

"No. That's why Shepard believed you were aliens. She didn't think Earth Force was intelligent enough to intentionally get such a detail wrong."

"I see." And Jane genuinely did. The moment Normandy ceased being of alien origin, her Grandmother defaulted to what she thought was the next logical conclusion. That she'd just been captured by the enemy, who'd somehow gotten control of a ridiculously advanced weapon.

"She'll continue to try to kill you, and she'll try to neutralize Liara T'Soni, who she'll view as an appreciable threat."

A twinge shot through Shepard's scar, apprehension and foreboding settling in her stomach. "How do you suggest we deal with the situation- Wait," she shook her head, "why're you helping us?"

"The technology of your ship, compounded by the resolution of the scans within Shep's medical reports, suggest a foreign origin. Combined with what's currently happening with Charon, you've either been telling us the truth, or are far too powerful for a lie to matter. If you are aliens, or foreign humans lying to us, the only reason for the lie, would be for some form of cultural joke."

"We could be trying to con you into fighting our war for us."

De Burka shook her head. "All you'd need to do, is ask."

Again, Shepard boggled. "Excuse me?"

"If you are foreign and not temporal, then to know enough about us to con us, you'd also know that a huge proportion of the population would willingly join and fight with you."

"We could be lying to save resources."

"You could also sit in earth orbit, encouraging us to expel our entire arsenal against your hull, while you watched whatever your equivalent to daytime television is."

"Good point." Shepard smirked, she was starting to understand why her Grandmother liked this person so much.

"How do I die?"

The smile faded. "Future history has already been altered, however way you did, you probably won't that way this time around."

"You should get used to people asking you. Even if it's not my current future, I want to know how I died in your relative history."

Jane deflated, de Burka wasn't going to let this go. "You were murdered in 2127. Someone remotely modified your cochleal implant to directly electrocute your brain."

"At least it was interesting." Catherine seemed to brighten for a moment, before once again becoming neutral. "Because of Shepard?"

"I don't know," Jane lied, "the Station Federation never discovered who did it. But I can tell you that the devices used to replace the cochlea, have been greatly improved. It's nearly impossible for them to cause any kind of neurological damage, and they can't simply be hacked. I've had two sets, the first, the ones I was implanted with as an infant, lasted much longer than intended, until I was fifteen, and the set they replaced, an additional fifteen."

"In the future, you replace your children's natural hearing with artificial devices?"

Shepard could tell de Burka thought the idea barbaric, and quickly moved to dispel the woman of the notion. "No no no... Well, some do, but for the most part, parents don't alter their children unless it's necessary, and there's a much more common implant that simply supplements a person's normal abilities. It's implanted underneath the skin and stimulates the eardrum as if it's normal sound. But I was born with a genetic condition that caused my auditory organs to develop malformed. Normally, it would've been corrected, but in utero scans showed I was developing normally. They didn't know until I was born completely deaf."

"Really?" Catherine's interest perked. "Did your parents have the condition? Did Shepard's kid?"

"Both were carriers, but both developed normally, and hereditary gene alteration is very complex, and usually messy, so..." Jane faded off, not really sure what else to say.

De Burka stared for a long silent moment, her thoughts blatantly churning in her eyes. "You blanked relations on Shep's medical reports, and you were the only person whose name wasn't volunteered."

"Oh." Shepard sagged minutely, it'd been a stupid and obvious tactic in retrospect, but one she hadn't expected to carry on for so long.

"Have you recovered from your injuries?"

"For the most part." She was pleased to see genuine concern in the other woman's expression, maybe befriending her Grandmother's first officer was actually going to work.

"Good. Don't take it personally. Shep's a hound, she'll bite down on anything threatening or unfamiliar, and won't let go until you force whatever it is out of her mouth."

Jane openly chuckled. "I've never heard my Grandmother described quite like that before."

"Most don't think of dogs as dogs, they think of them as people. Shepard is a domesticated killer. She has ideals, she's charismatic, and she's sociable, but what she most enjoys doing, is ending people who deserve it."

"I know." Jane subconsciously covered her scar to protect it. "She died hunting pirates."

"Shep'd be gratified to know that."

Some of Shepard's old resentments bubbled to the surface. "It was a waste of her talents, and a completely pointless... She could've been passing her skills on to the next generation, or commanding the fleet... or she could've lived long enough to help us fight off the reapers."

"Why are you angry?" Catherine looked genuinely perplexed. "Do you blame a planet for having gravity? A star for expelling radiation? The laws of the universe for jostling you around? Shepard's instincts are animalistic, and her reactions are primal. She hates her own intelligence, and would much rather face the world naked with only her cunning to survive. Hunting down a group that her society has deemed bad and needing to be dealt with, would've felt fulfilling to her, and she would've considered it as positively contributing to her society."

Jane's mouth tightened, her resolve solidified. "We're not animals, we can learn to accept and enjoy the reality we live in, and the things we should... need to do to make ourselves and those around us better."

Impossibly, de Burka's impassive features relaxed. "You're right."

"You're just saying that to shut me up." Shepard's anger ignited.

"Does Normandy need to remain near Charon for what you're doing to continue?"

"We're reactivating the mass relay."

Catherine nodded. "Does Normandy need to remain near Charon for the reactivation to continue?"

Shepard could feel her unchanneled aggravation twist at her insides, but she forced herself to calm. "No, the relay is autonomous, and as you've probably guessed, an ancient technology."

"Are you able to tow the Damysus?"

"No."

"Then I suggest you intercept and pick myself and several others up. We'll go a long way to convincing Shepard of the reality of the situation, and help devise a plan for integration. During your encounter with the Captain, you stated your refusal to pick sides. Integration necessitates that you legitimize one over the other. This will not necessarily cause conflict, and it'll negate both sides attempting self-proclamation. I'd highly recommend keeping Captain Shepard sedated, as anything you say or do will be interpreted as part of a deception, and she'll continue to try to destroy you and your ship, or force you to kill her. I'll expect you in a few minutes, or if you choose to refuse my request, we will join you in fourteen hours. End transmission."

The Commander's head flew back. "What in the happy hell just happened..."


	5. When Fate Knocks

"All hands, this is Traynor. Gravity will be reduced to point six of standard. Please take care while moving about the ship."

Samantha's gaze drifted into middle space as she removed her hand from the touchscreen... She could still see the Commander in her mind's eye... the bemused look... the blood oozing over her lips... the fall... Liara's face twisting with terrifying hatred...

Normandy and crew needed Shepard if they were going to survive this era, she was the single most capable woman to get people to give more of themselves than anyone Sam had ever known. The Commander had led half the people on the ship on a suicide mission they had absolutely no expectation of coming back from; then just before time had interrupted their plans, they and the other half decided to do it all over again. Even Samantha herself was willing to risk harvesting by the reapers for Shepard, despite having nothing left to fight for, and no home left to go back to.

But what disturbed her most about the memory, was how she felt as she watched Admiral Shepard being crushed against the inner hull. She of course felt sick to her stomach, and helpless, but she also felt herself surge in sympathetic support... as if her own biotics bereft body were squeezing the life out of the woman. But then, the Commander struggled to Liara's side, placed a blood soaked hand on her arm, and asked her to stop. Even on the verge of death, Commander Shepard chose altruism, while a self-described pacifist such as Samantha, lusted to hear the bones of her attacker crack.

"Specialist?"

Traynor came back to herself as she met Major Alenko's strained, but kind gaze.

"How're you doing on the fleets' communication codes?"

"I'm managing about half their encryption cycles sir. The Normandy's main computer was never designed to process this level of data." Her eyes fell back to the unfamiliar two-D console. "It was engineered to assist EDI."

Kaidan gave her a reassuring smile. "You'll make it work."

With the Commander busy recovering from her injuries, the situation fell on he and Ashley to deal with, but there was very little they could do to improve Normandy's condition. The ship was sound and fully functional, but her fuel reserves were wasting away, which could barely be dealt with until they relayed to the Arcturus system. The crew in comparison, were far worse for wear. Most tasks required while holding station, were repetitive and unengaging, subjecting everyone to nothing but time to process all that had happened to them, all they had lost.

"We need to discuss wiping the quantum cores," Williams interjected from the galaxy map dais.

Alenko threw the Marine a look. "Now's not the time LC."

"EDI's gone," she insisted, "and its computing power is a valuable resource we're squandering."

A pang of guilt and sadness shot through Samantha's chest, they were some of the select few who'd survived the reaper's ongoing assaults. Nearly everyone aboard ship, was the last living member of their family... except for EDI, who was the only one of her kind...

"Oh Ashley," she breathed.

Williams softened as she slumped toward Traynor, grasping the dais' railing for support. "I know you felt close to her, but she's gone. And I know you want to respect your memories of her, and give her a chance to recover. But it's been three weeks, and even if she had been human, in a situation like this, we'd be distributing her weapons, rations, and armour to the rest of the crew, and appropriately dealing with her body. It's what we all would expect, and hope that our crewmates would do. If we as individuals can't survive; then the group must."

"You stole that from the Commander," the crewman manning operations accused.

"That's enough mister," Alenko tried to interrupt before the conversation turned nasty.

Campbell couldn't stay silent, she'd had enough of Williams. "Major, the LC's trying to justify pulling life support from a fellow crewman, not to mention our friend, and for no good god damned reason. I for one would NOT expect or hope that for myself, or any other crewman, regardless of their species."

"At ease Private-"

"How would you like to spend the next forty-eight in the brig Campbell," Ashley shouted over Alenko.

"I'll be spending a lot longer than forty-eight in there if you go anyway near EDI ma'am."

"Is that a threat Private?"

Samantha's heart sank even further, Ashley was having a harder time dealing with their new reality than most, and Sam couldn't seem to find a way to help her dear friend.

"Quiet." Kaidan's biotics flared in anger. "No one is threatening anyone, and EDI will remain under medical observation until Ms Lawson changes her diagnosis, or until Commander Shepard orders otherwise."

"We're just supposed to take her at her word," Williams questioned. "She's Cerberus, and has every reason to keep those quantum boxes under their control."

"Bashy... Bashy... Bashy..." a smooth disembodied voice mocked. "There's no they anymore, there's barely a we. All that's left of everything we ever knew, is in, on... or well, *IS* this ship. Gotta face that fact sooner or later."

The cold hard truth, stated in a very unkind manner... Other than the Commander, Kasumi seemed to be the only other member of the crew able to get through to Ash when she was upset. But while Shepard would talk, hint, and cajole, the Thief would incite and inflame.

"I thought I told you to stay decloaked while aboard ship," Ashley gruffed.

The voice giggled briefly. "You say a lot of things Bashy, not all of it is well thought out. But you really do need to come to terms with the fact that your mother and sisters, were probably turned into reaper goo... before being blinked out of existence that is."

Ashley glowered in Goto's suspected direction, but said nothing, for which Sam was endlessly grateful for. Ash was at her wits end, and rapidly approaching some form of breakdown. She was angry and frustrated at having the enemy suddenly ripped from her sights, and her grief at losing her family and friends, was being denied a release because of it... and god help her, Ash continued to cling to the belief that their families could still be rescued. Sam understood that hope, a small part of herself held it for her parents and brothers... but she knew they probably died when the reapers retook the Citadel, and most likely vanished from future history the moment the Damysus detected Normandy. The raging conflict between reality and Ashley's hopes, were causing a tempest of emotions in the poor woman's soul, and Samantha feared what Commander Shepard would be forced to do to her dearest friend should she break.

"CIC, Shepard. Prepare a shuttle for immediate launch."

Like a bell rung in the stillness of the night, the Commander's voice, being heard for the first time in nearly three weeks, shook the gloom from the crew's faces as it turned their eyes toward an unseen, but brighter horizon... Normandy's heart hath awoken...

 

 

"Are you unwell my Love?"

Liara brought Shepard's surroundings rushing into the forefront of her mind... She turned to face her Bondmate. "I'm okay Hun."

"You have been staring at your terminal for some time."

"It's just..." She drifted off, her mind reanalyzing the conversation she just had with de Burka. "Grandma's first officer... I'm not sure..."

The Maiden came to kneel before the Woman, taking her hands into her own to offer support and comfort. "Why you volunteered so much information? Why you are considering fetching her and her staff?"

"You were monitoring." The Spectre's face turned lour.

"I thought it prudent."

"You can't just hack into high level communiques whenever you feel like it."

"Why?" Liara attempted to take on an air of charm and cavalier. "I am the Shadow Broker, and you have often asked me to obtain other being's classified information."

"That's different."

"Because it is you my Love?"

Shepard glared.

"I believe you feel a kinship toward this being, because of the stories your Grandmother had shared with you regarding her. It is understandable that you would feel a level of security toward her."

"So you think I should trust her?"

The Maiden's expression solidified into seriousness. "No, I do not. I believe you should 'give this being enough rope'. If she fails to hang herself, you can accept to be more vulnerable concerning her."

"When did you get so wise?" Shepard smirked.

"I met an Alliance Commander many years ago who irrevocably altered my life."

"Sorry."

"And so you should be." Liara stood, pulling her Bondmate up with her. "Come, you should prepare. You will want to retrieve Commander de Burka's party as soon as possible."

"I haven't even decided if I should yet."

"You have my Love, I can sense it. You plan to take a shuttle, and you wish to bring Jack, but you are attempting to justify the decision to yourself, while reconciling that this will not lead the Damysus' crew into believing that you can be manipulated." She took a cleansing breath. "You will not take Jack, you will take me, and justifications are unnecessary, as you need to isolate these people to discuss the situation with them effectively. As for being easily manipulated, you are, in certain instances."

"Bringing you is *not* a good idea-"

"Because I attempted to murder their Captain? This is exactly why you should bring me. Their commander confirmed that your Grandmother would consider me a viable threat, it stands to reason, her crew would also view me as such. Further, having me at your side will give the impression that you are ready for a fight should the need arise, but as humans, they will be hesitant to view me, a biological, and female looking being, as a weapon."

"It could also make them think I'm vulnerable while alone."

"I have thought of this. You will find an opportunity to use your own biotics, to demonstrate that you too, are a force to be reckoned with."

"They could also blow up their own ship to get rid of us." Shepard discarded her bed clothes in favour of a heavy uniform.

"They could, but I do not believe they will, nor do you. Commander de Burka, and the human factions in this system, will be far more interested in how exactly we saved your's and your Grandmother's lives, and the technology Normandy has demonstrated. Some will also be interested in an interstellar relationship with powerful trading partners."

"You seem to have this all figured out."

"No Shepard, I do not. I greatly dislike this form of... manoeuvring, I much prefer data. You however, knew what you wished to do the moment the option was open to you. My Love?" Liara gently placed a hand beneath her Bondmate's chin. "You must trust yourself as much as I do."

"Conceit is the bane of the powerful."

"There is no asari word for humble my Love."

Shepard rolled her eyes. "The bond works both ways Hun, and you're hoping to intimidate these people. You're letting your anger consume you. You've thought about exactly what it means for me to be the highest ranking officer in the Alliance, and exactly what you'd like me to say and do to the Council. You're hoping I'll be able to get the rest of humanity to rally behind me, which is yet to be seen, and confront the rest of the galactic governments... which I also highly doubt will listen."

Liara turned thoughtful. "Without the constraints imposed by the Citadel, humanity nearly defeated the turians. Your species is paranoid, aggressive, and easily militarized. Exactly what is needed to defeat the reapers."

"When did you become so aggressive?"

The Asari hardened. "When the reapers destroyed my mother's mind, decimated my homeworld, killed my father, and processed nearly everyone I once knew, into a husk."

"We won't let that happen."

"No, we will not."

Having finished dressing, Shepard pulled the Maiden into her lap as she sat on the edge of the bed. "How's EDI?"

Liara's naked brow furrowed sullenly. "She continues to be unresponsive. Agent Lawson indicated that her quantum matrix shows a two percent degradation."

"Is she still sure she can hear us?"

"I believe Miranda is convinced of this."

"But you're not?"

"Since learning of EDI's neurological damage." The Maiden's eyes fell. "I have begun to lose hope."

"Hey, Hunny." Shepard ducked into Liara's line of sight. "We've had a shit few months, probably the worst since the galaxy went through all this the last time... But that doesn't mean good things have suddenly stopped existing."

"I know my Love. But I have become used to limiting my expectations."

"Hunny Bear..." She wrapped her arms around the Asari. "I promise, I'll try my hardest to make sure no one alive today, or our future children, ever experiences the hopelessness we have."

Weeping lightly, Liara nodded. "I believe you Shepard."

"Come on, let's go scare some uninitiated humans."

"You will bring me."

"Of course I will." Shepard stood, manoeuvring Liara's body to the side as she moved. "Besides, if I didn't, you wouldn't let me hear the end of it for the next week or so."

"I believe I will wear my red and black combat cloak."

The Spectre halted at the door. "My colours?"

"I think it may be prudent."

Her smile brightened. "I'll wear my division jacket."

The oddness of heading out to confront some enemy or potential ally, or to engage in combat with the Asari at her side, feeling like a date, had long since subsided, Shepard simply accepted that that was exactly what they were doing. Liara was a stunningly talented biotic, and they were both saving lives... what better could they be doing with their time together?

Without losing eye contact, she hit her comm. "CIC, Shepard. Prepare a shuttle for immediate launch."

"Shepard, Williams. Aye ma'am, I'll have a team put together."

"Negative. It'll be just myself, Liara, and Cortez. I also want you to prepare for several guests. Better make it an even dozen."

"Skipper?"

"Just do it Ash," Shepard squeezed at her temples, "I can't really explain right now."

There was a short pause. "Aye aye ma'am."

The Commander sighed. "She's going to lose it soon."

Liara's eyes widened in concern. "Should you not do something to prevent this?"

"Not that kind of lose it Hun." She took the Asari's hand as they headed for the door. "She doesn't want to believe her family's gone, and in her world, her god wouldn't allow those kinds of things to happen."

"What do you believe she will do?"

"Pick a fight, hopefully with me, take out her frustrations, break down into tears... probably never forgive me for allowing it to happen."

"My Love." Liara gently took the Woman's face into her hands. "None of this is your fault, you could have done nothing to prevent what the reapers did, or prevent our passage through time."

Shepard stole the Maiden's grasp into her own, kissing the Asari's knuckles as she did so. "Maybe, but Ash won't see it that way, she'll see me as the one who made all the decisions, and the one to blame, no matter how irrational it might be. People like her need to feel like there's some kind of order in the universe, like someone or something is in ultimate control, and if something bad happens to them, it's either their own fault, or some third party, such as myself, has interfered with the grand scheme of things to bring about their suffering."

"She cannot truly believe that Shepard."

"Intellectually, I doubt that's how she explains things to herself, but emotionally, she's still a child, relying on a nebulous parental figure to love and protect her. The thought that something in her life, happened simply because it happened, is as disturbing to her, as the realization of who and what the protheans were, was to you."

"I understand." Liara's gaze fell to the deck, sadness flooding her eyes. "I miss the being I knew during the Saren mission."

"She's still there Hun, but this is who she is as well, this is just who she is under stress and mourning." There was a long, drawn silence as Shepard examined her Bondmate's down cast features. "You're not talking about Ash, are you?"

The Maiden didn't reply, she only disembarked the elevator into the Shuttle Bay, her hand still firmly clasping Shepard's.

"Commander," Vega shouted as he jogged over to the pair. "You have to take me."

"We have enough people on this mission James."

"But you'll need me if there's trouble."

Shepard threw the man a look. "I'm sure Liara will be able to handle anything we might run into."

"Biotics are impressive, but all that cooling down? Lola, you need something a little more predictable."

"This again." Liara rested her fingers on her forehead.

"James," the Commander asserted, "are you saying you can crowd control a hundred-sixty without a weapon? And without hurting most of them?"

"Well..."

"Liara can put them into stasis, bend steel to block off corridors, neural shock if necessary... If I'm in a brawl, your my man Vega, when I need finesse..."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"She means you're a bull in an antiques shop," Miranda commented as she glided over.

Shepard prepared to deflect another offer, but Lawson spoke before she could.

"I'd like permission to assign Ms Chambers to EDI."

Intrigued, the Maiden questioned, "you believe her silence may be psychological?"

"EDI's core personality traits are based on human neurological scans." Miranda shifted into an uncomfortably straighter posture. "Her perception of the ninety years we experienced as a moment, would've been greatly different to her, and not being able to interact with the crew during that time, may have caused conditioning she's finding hard to break."

"You're saying she's taught herself to live with being mute," Shepard reasoned.

"Essentially, but she may no longer be able to understand spoken words. She is continuing to interact with the crew however."

"How?" James jumped back into the conversation.

Miranda focused on the large man. "Commands to open doors, move the elevator, lighting changes, they're coming directly from EDI's processors, not the main computer's."

Liara felt hope rekindle. "She could be operating solely on root functions."

"No, EDI was never programmed with those kinds of parameters in mind, and because of how her former shackling was accomplished, it's not a trivial matter for her to interface directly with the ship's systems. This is wilful on her part Commander."

"Understood." She nodded. "All hands, this is Shepard. I'd like everyone to know that EDI is still with us. At the moment, she seems to be operating the non-essential systems as a kind of courtesy, but for some reason, is unable to reply, or is unable to understand us. All I can suggest, is that we engage her in some way. Talk to her, try to play some of her favourite games..." Shepard sighed. "We all've been injured, just do for her, what you would want someone to do for you. Ms Chambers, report to Ms Lawson in the AI core. Shepard out."

Miranda hesitated. "There's one more thing Commander."

"I'm not taking you or Jack with me."

"Very well." She turned and walked away.

Shepard shifted her attention to James. "You could learn something from her Vega."

"Lola?"

She levelled a glare at him. "Back to work."

"Yes ma'am." He saluted; then also returned to his station.

"During the time we spent apart," Liara began, a small smirk to her lips, "I had nearly forgotten how willing others were, to blindly charge into the unknown at your side."

"Jealous?"

"Concerned. While there is no word in asari for humble, there are several for ego."

Shaking her head, Shepard moved toward the shuttle. "I'm not the one who installed myself as the anonymous head of a powerful and cultish organization."

 

 

The froth of plans upon plans churned in de Burka's head, and she was ready to move forward. Commander Shepard was somewhat of a question mark, as was most of Normandy's crew, but genetics and upbringing counted for something... she was a Shepard after all, a product of Hannah's lineage and parenting, and could therefor be relied upon for certain responses. But even if nothing passed from grandmother to grandchild, the nature of the current situation, what all sides would require from one another, and the basic training Commander Shepard would've required to get to where she was, would control for any anomalies in Catherine's assumptions... What she was preparing for, would be a huge risk, and it might alienate her from Hannah forever, but what she'd learned from the communique, left her with little option... it was just something she had to do.

De Burka suddenly stopped on the middle of the corridor ladder, the perception of gravity from the ship's deceleration weighing heavily on her body. She didn't even know this woman's first name, only that she was a Shepard, and had some identifying factors which suggested her other ancestry. Were those wisps of evidence enough to risk her life and career on? Enough to space her entire friendship with Shepard for? Was she justified at being angry at Shep for something she hadn't even done yet, and probably would not do in this new timeline?

The lack of conformational information was jarring, the reliance on supposition frightening... but time was running out... Hannah would be awoken sooner or later... Two powerful personalities would collide... Damysus and the entire Sol system would be caught in the middle... Shep could trigger something which could last centuries, and might seal the fate of all humanity... Catherine needed to do this, if not, both ships could lose people... de Burka herself could lose...

She shook her head, steeled herself, and continued to sickbay.

"What's up Burk?"

Doctor Barlow was the first to speak. Catherine had called him, the idiot Benji, Lieutenant-Commander Grimes, and Lieutenant Riley. They would be her EVA party, and each would play a role in controlling both Shepards' actions.

Grimes, Damysus' tactical officer, sniggered aloud. "Maybe she's called us all down here to watch Benjamin get section eighted."

"Watch it mister," Dorcas bit back.

The TacOp held up his hands, mock shivering.

"Zip it, both of you," de Burka barked. "We'll be transferring over to the alien vessel."

"I respectfully refuse commander," Barlow objected.

"What's wrong Doc," Grimes interrupted once again, "don' like the taste of human jam?"

Normally, Catherine would never put these men together. Shep liked a little friction amongst her crew, she believed it brought out the failings people easily hid behind politeness and decorum, but de Burka hated it. Grimes was the perfect individual for getting under people's skin, given a small amount of fuel, he could spit poison for minutes on end. Barlow, he was a typical doctor in many respects, but was also slightly crazy. And Benjamin was... Benjamin. He was an outsider, and a complicated story, one which de Burka thought she was the only one aboard ship who knew the extent of. If Normandy was from the future, their records would give her a definitive answer on him. Riley was the only one Catherine could get along with, and the only one who would be doing any actual work on this mission.

"You'll be evaluating Captain Shepard's condition Doctor." Catherine threw the men an admonishing look. "Prepare equipment for genetic scans and standard physical evaluations. Grimes, I want you to tactically evaluate the ship and crew. Riley, notice whatever you can about their technology. Benji... keep the Captain distracted."

"Excuse me," Dorcas questioned.

De Burka allowed her face to drain of all expression, her being taking on a dead, lifeless projection. "Keep, the Captain, distracted. At your level of training, you shouldn't require a dictionary to understand an order."

"But I out rank you," Grimes mocked in Benjamin's voice from behind his hand. He flinched when Catherine brought her ghostly ire on him. "Sorry commander."

The TacOp would irritate Normandy's crew into showing their true colours, Barlow would be able to instantly determine if they were telling them the truth about the Captain and the aliens, Benji would give Shepard someone to latch her anger onto, and Riley could give some valuable insight into how their technology functioned. But if de Burka was wrong, Riley's would be a pointless death... Whatever the young woman could determine regarding the highly advanced vessel, if they were being deceived, her findings would probably never be reported.

"Shouldn't we get authorization first," Benjamin tried.

"Admiral Taylor has given me full discretion in how we proceed." De Burka hesitated. They'd all learn what she'd discovered eventually, holding it back now would be pointless. "Their captain is Commander Shepard, Hannah Shepard's granddaughter."

"That's utter bullshit Burk;" "And you believed her;" "Sure commander;" "I find that highly unlikely."

Catherine ignored their bitching, turned off her hearing implants; then hit the breach alarm test. The piercing, shrill siren, designed to be heard in a partial vacuum, wailed into the confines of the compartment while sharp red flashes stabbed from around the doors, the cacophony hammering at the room's occupants. De Burka levelled a dead glare at each of the officers, staring them down with eerie placidness. When the alarm finally silenced, the phantom of its presence continued to echo.

The sudden still, the others undivided attention, caused nauseous anxiety to flare in Catherine's stomach. Was she truly confident enough to risk wasting Riley's life? If she was wrong, the men would be dying while performing a useful duty... But Riley would be dying for nothing... Shep wouldn't send her, she'd hold her back until she was positive, or unless her presence guaranteed non-suspicion...

"This isn't a discussion, nor is it open for debate. You are all going, or you will resign, and if you do, you will be shoved into an escape pod, and left to drift until one of the fleets pick you up."

Grimes raised his hand. "Are we allowed to ask questions?"

Catherine gave him an unblinking stare.

"What exactly is the goal here?"

"Establish a relationship before Earth Force," she lied.

"And if we can't, or it's a trap?"

"We die."

The TacOp shrugged. "Kay, I'm good."

"What about Shepard," Barlow pushed.

"The Admiralty has avoided broaching her as a subject. I suspect they assume she'll do something unexpected, either making herself the hero, or retrospectively expendable." Catherine paused once again. "They don't know anything about the identity of the alien's commander."

Grimes lifted his hand again. "Are we allowed to bitch about that?"

"No."

"Just checking."

"You're needlessly endangering us all," Benjamin accused.

Ignoring him, de Burka turned to Riley. "You haven't said your piece yet."

The young woman shifted uncomfortably. "I'd like to see the ship ma'am."

"*Commander de Burka, bridge. A small vessel has appeared off our port. It was just suddenly there ma'am... It's matching our deceleration perfectly.*"

Dread exploded in Catherine's chest... It'd barely been ten or twenty minutes since she'd got off the comm with Commander Shepard... She could still countermand her own order... She'd have to confront Hannah... She could play it safe... No, someone or something had carefully planned their encounter, this wasn't just random... Nothing else made sense...

"*They're hailing ma'am.*"

Catherine swallowed her apprehension. "Put it through here."

"*Damysus, this is Normandy Shuttle Two, ready for low speed personnel transfer.*"

"We can't do this de Burka," Benjamin insisted.

She'd had just about enough of the man's constant obstructionism, his endless self-centred negativity... one of the Shepards would deal with him. "Doctor, if he continues whining, inject him with something to make him compliant."

"With pleasure ma'am."

The gnawing anxiety twisted into clawing. This was such a bad idea, she couldn't even say she was fifty percent certain of her assumptions... Hannah was going to be so pissed off...

"*Damysus, Shuttle Two, can you read us?*"

The voice had switched from an unknown man's, to Commander Shepard's... The auxiliary craft had been a surprise, de Burka had assumed Normandy itself would have to retrieve them, something so small having the ability to travel so fast, was mind boggling... but the Commander being aboard, not just a bunch of lackeys...

She stepped in front of sickbay's comm console, and opened their side of the channel. "Shuttle two, this is Commander de Burka. You can approach number three port side egress. We'll light the airlock and depressurize while our people suit up."

"*There's no need to depressurize Damysus, we have a universal skirt we can lock on with. And before your engineer insist you ask, yes, it'll function just fine at these velocities, and no, we do not need to maintain a perfect deceleration sync, we can anchor the shuttle to the Damysus using a mass... an artificial gravity mooring.*"

"Understood, proceed." Before Catherine could completely close the comm, she caught Riley tearing out of sickbay. "Where the hell are you going!?"

"Number three egress."

Grimes twitched dismissively. "Guess she wants to see what an artificial gravity mooring looks like."

Benjamin bullied himself in front de Burka. "This is ill advised in the extreme, and you know it."

"I won't just put you in a pod Benji," Catherine menaced toward him. "I'll stuff you into a pressure suit, eject you out a torpedo tube, let fate and inertia sort you out."

"I got it!" Grimes snapped his fingers, causing Dorcas to flinch. "Benji the dog. I knew the name sounded familiar."

"Gordon..." De Burka rubbed at her forehead. "Just get ready. Shoot Commander Dorcas if he doesn't." Then left the compartment.

Barlow hurried after her. "You can't seriously expect me to go over there, it's a suicide mission."

"Doctor, if you didn't go, the millisecond you saw one of those aliens, you'd be bitching at me for making you stay."

"Benjamin might be a little shit Burk, but he's right, all of this is impossibly implausible... it has to be some kind of trick."

Catherine stopped. "Barlow..." She softened slightly. "Ed. The fact that Benji doesn't know what's going on, tells me it's not an Earth Force trick." She forestalled his next question. "I can't tell you, but you'll find out soon enough. For now, keep your mouth shut, and be prepared to treat the Captain, or examine some aliens' physiology."

He eyed her skeptically. "You've been wrong before Burk, very wrong."

"I have?"

"They killed, or nearly killed Shepard."

"After she shanked their CO. Do you have another example, or do I have to ask one of the nurses?"

When he said nothing, de Burka continued toward the airlock, and unsurprisingly to her, Barlow followed, walking directly behind her, practically using her as a shield against his imagination.

At the airlock, Riley's face was plastered against the observation portal, intently examining the incoming vessel. "The engines and gravitational effects are giving off a blue glow. Maybe whatever they're using causes photons to vibrate at the four-hundred to five-hundred nanometer range."

"*We're registering a contact on the hull commander.*"

"I don't see anything physical ma'am, just the light." The science officer attempted to crane a little further. "Maybe the gravity effect is causing particles to shift velocity."

"Stow it Riley," Catherine ordered, "but keep observing."

De Burka could feel destiny racing toward her, like falling into infinity... Everyone's life was about to irrevocably change... For the better or the worse... Her strange codependent friendship with Hannah was about to evaporate... Humanity's world would be expanded hundreds of fold...

Damysus shook as Normandy's shuttle made contact.

"*Positive air pressure detected outside airlock three.*"

"Station protocol. Open inner and outer doors."

The stage curtains to the rest of the universe parted, and there, standing centre, a woman the spitting image of Shepard's mother... except with sharper cheekbones, a more oval face, and the build of someone you wouldn't want to screw with... She reminded Catherine of her baby sister.


	6. Siren of Death, Bringer of Peace)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Doctor Chakwas watches over Hannah Shepard's unconscious body, she reminisces how the legendary Admiral, shaped her into the woman she became.

A dark shadow fell over the face of Admiral Hannah Shepard... younger... smoother... far more peaceful than the incongruous image etched in Chakwas' mind... and featured so much like the great woman's granddaughter's... Nearly half a century before, this woman, this titan, far older and far more ravaged by the hazards of her career, took a freshly minted medical officer... and broke her...

 

"Hold him down."

A scene of horrid domination, preceded by merciless violence. Karin's first combat experience. Admiral Shepard had been everything everyone praised... and warned. The retaliation she demanded her people execute, as swift as it was vicious, the Admiral herself, the most cruel in her aim, the most savage with her fists. Their landing party of five, commanded and headed by Shepard herself, annihilated the pirate stronghold. Thirty men, obliterated from the universe...

"You're Dead Eyes?"

"Shove it in your cunt, Alliance bitch."

The greasy, dishevelled man craned his head as he attempted to spit on the Admiral. She, in turn, stood a foot on his temple.

"Are you Carl Fulton, AKA, Dead Eyes, leader of the Barnard System's Bandits?"

"Blow me!"

Shepard let her weapon fall from her shoulder, her arm limply extending toward the ground, her aim locking onto the man's hand. "Okay," she sighed, "but it probably won't be as good for you."

The bang echoed and reverberated off the walls in the airtight compartment, clawing at the occupants' eardrums. Karin found herself flinching more than the others, almost doubling over in fright and anguish, the sound of the man's tortured wails scratching at her nasolacrimal duct.

"One more time." The barrel of the Admiral's weapon glided to Fulton's genitalia. "Are you Dead Eyes?"

"Fuck you." His reply was weak, his voice strained.

Another burst of cacophonous brutality. But in the place of tormented screams, a desperate cry of 'yes.'

"Treat him."

Karin scrambled to the pirate's side, ripping open the front compartment of her suit, fumbling in amongst her supplies for emergency surgical equipment. His bulbourethral artery was completely destroyed, but the pudendal arteries were intact. In his arm, everything below his capitate was gone.

"Where's the skin farm?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he nearly wept.

"Doctor, stop." A short moment of silence, a single second stretching into infinity. "I said stop," Shepard roared, the long strands of white/blonde hair dancing around her head as her attention snapped to Chakwas.

Confusion, anger, indignance... How could this soldier order her to stop saving this man's life? What in the universe gave her the right? "He'll die in seconds."

"You have to help me," Fulton begged.

"Lieutenant, if Doctor Chakwas is still administering treatment by the time I finish this sentence, remove her from the area."

Karin froze, her hands locked in position, poised to fuse the next vain closed.

"Please," the pirate groaned with all his might. "They'll kill me."

"Chakwas, your estimation of how long he has?"

Sharp nails of sweat pierced Karin's pores. "Less than two minutes."

"The beating of your own heart will do it for them, if you don't tell me where it is."

"Luhman-Wise." The strain in the man's voice was heart breaking... his pain, the blinding encroachment of death, the cold delirium. "Second planet, forty by negative twenty. It's built into a foot hill."

The moment the man finished speaking, an impotent spray of blood washed over Karin's armour, splattering dots of red onto the green and white of her suit. Only the crimson cross designating her division, camouflaged what the Admiral had just done...

 

Slowly, an armoured hand drifted toward the peaceful face, an old style hypodermic injector in its grip... A lifetime of idealism, of hope and certainty, swallowed by the evils of the universe... A young innocent woman, dreaming of being a healer and protector... dragged to her own murder by a giant...

 

The pirate raid had stuck with her. Having a man's life, one she was trying to save, ripped out of her literal hands, had stuck with her... It was clear that Admiral Shepard was a monster, and that she used her position as a means to feed her psychosis without fear of being removed from society.

After leaving the planetoid, the Admiral brought the Kratos to the closest way station for refuelling, there, Karin considered jumping ship, considered abandoning her post... But she was the only doctor aboard, and the crew needed her. Leaving would hurt them all, and would do nothing to curb or curtail Shepard's behaviour, the Alliance had allowed her to get away with her insanity for this long already... and the Stations Federation before them... Earth Force before that...

She needed to get out from under this mad-woman's command, she needed to protect herself and her own sanity. What would happen if she refused to treat someone she knew the Admiral was only going to kill... or if she euthanized them to protect them from torture... Would Shepard kill her? Torment her?

Pins and needles stabbed Karin's skin as she stepped onto the bridge, the ship's acceleration giving the sensation of gravity.

"Doctor," Shepard preempted without turning to greet her. "Crew and compression pods ready for interstellar?"

"Yes ma'am."

The Admiral took a deep, audible, but even breath. "You're here to request a transfer."

Panic exploded over Chakwas diaphragm, toothily gnawed at her underarms.

Shepard swivelled around, propping her leg up on an oddly placed foot stool, resting her hand over her toned stomach. "Relax, I'm not going to space you. What the hell do you think I am anyways, a monster? But of course you do. The raid freaked you out. You're green, you have little idea of what its like out here in the outer worlds. Most of earth is a comfortable suburban utopia. Shops always have your favourite drink, neighbour down the street more than willing to have an affair... Sol's orbital stations and colonies, peaceful, industrial-punked cities gleaming and teaming with life.

"Are you familiar with the history of the colonization of the new world, Doctor? The western hemisphere of earth? European settlers were paid, or escaped by their own means, to the Americas to get away from the stupidity and persecution of the old world. But eventually, the morons followed. They brought their religions, their violence, their ideas of right and wrong... And what the old world morons didn't bring, the new world idiots invented for themselves, and together, as a harmoniously dysfunctional society, they shoved their ideals down people's throats until the ones who just wanted to get away, to build a life for themselves, choked to death on them. It happened again when we colonized orbital space, the moon, and mars, and again when we pushed out toward the furthest reaches of the Sol System. Now, it's followed us here... and it'll happen again when we push beyond our closest neighbours."

Karin remained stock still, petrified to the spot.

"If you're not willing to fight and kill to protect the nameless, the nobodies of history, I suggest you take a post at the dig site on mars. Looks like loads of interesting, safe stuff will be found there."

"I'm sorry ma'am."

"Don't apologize to me Doctor, apologize to the people we find at the skin farm... You'll find out what that is after the burst. Afterwards, you'll be free to run back home, crawl under your bed."

 

Carefully, the injector pressed into the disturbingly youthful woman's neck, its contents rushing into her veins. Chakwas left the device on the shelf as she melted into the shadows, Shepard would awaken in a minute or two, and she wanted to be well hidden before that occurred.

 

Luhman-Wise two was a desolate, baron world. It had an impossibly thin, completely unbreathable atmosphere, no surface water, no flora or fauna, and only two dim, barely radiant dwarf stars lighting the sky. Over its entire surface, only a few frontier colonies dotted its landscape, originally setup to mine resources. The Kratos' landing party however, was well away from those areas, they were in the middle of nowhere, creeping up on a lone structure with no business being where it was.

"You sure you want her here Shep?"

Karin stayed in the background, steeling herself for the inevitable hell the Admiral would visit upon her.

"Shut up Johnston."

"I'm just saying, we could call her if we find any slaves alive."

Slaves? Sickening dread dripped into Chakwas bowels.

"I said shut it." Shepard fell into silence as her masked face stared intently into the twilight of midday. "I'm not seeing anyone on the door or any surveillance. There's a chuck pile to the right, maybe thirty bodies?"

"Bodies?"

"Settle down Doctor, you'll get your chance to examine them." Shepard turned away from the target, appearing to think, her eyes and mouth relaxing more than Karin had ever seen from her before. "Johnston, you're on our ass, keep the Doctor ahead of you. The line's me, Russell, Palmer, Chakwas, Johnston. Keep line-of-sight. Fire at your discretion."

The team nodded or otherwise confirmed their understanding... The Admiral, took a final, critical assessment of each member... then lunged into a sprint toward the building. As ordered, Russel went next, keeping pace a few meters behind. A breath or two vanished into the maw of time before Palmer bolted, moving as if he'd been yanked by some unseen tether. When it was Karin's turn, Johnston gave her a shove, propelling her into the flat chasm of emptiness between herself and the target.

Karin's world bled into a surreal drowning of serenity... she couldn't hear the foot falls of the others, only her own breath reverberating in her ears, the violent shaking of armour and weapons swallowed by nothingness, and the sound of her own arms and legs rubbing against her suit, subdued. Ahead, the leader of their pack, a woman three times Chakwas age, maintained the driving pressure of their rush, her legs pumping without hesitation or stumble... Karin herself, supposedly in her prime, reasonably fit and regularly conditioned by a military exercise regime, was falling behind, the supposedly old woman clad in black with red highlights, pulling away... Shepard was as astonishing as she was frightening.

The closer they came to the base, the more defined its features became. She could see something akin to a loading dock, tanks of some nature, an airlock, and a mound of well textured apricot...

The run was exhausting, draining, and blurred her vision... she could hardly make out the Admiral's form... Johnston grabbed her from behind, lifting her ever so slightly, pushed her forward... She began suffering from mild bronchoconstriction... lactic acid burned at her thighs and calves...

"Check, no turrets."

Shepard's voice was unnaturally even, barely strained as she spoke. Karin could hardly think, couldn't rest with Johnston's grip insisting her onward. But almost in the next step, she felt her body crash into a wall, her four other teammates standing beside her, and if dignity remotely matter to her in that moment, she would've resisted doubling over, cranking her suit's O2 levels the minute she could see her wrist controls.

"Don't pop in your lid Doctor, this is by no means over. And try not to freak out."

Ice cold hatred crystallized in Karin's veins, biting and clawing... insistent laryngopharyngeal clearing filled the comms... the telltale click and hiss of medication being delivered... 

The Admiral was barely managing to avoid choking on her own phlegm, the medication, Chakwas could guess. It didn't take long however, for her professional assessment of Shepard to fall into an endless pit of forgotten. Karin was now standing beside the uneven splash of apricot, its composition as clear as water. Until that moment, naraka had remained a nebulous concept, a mythological narrative half listened to as her grandmother told of it. If she knelt from where she stood, and outstretched a single hand, she could've help both mother and child she saw suffering the throes of shoulder dystocia... But both mother and child were exposed to the life sapping harshness of vacuum... The baby's face was frozen in a twisted scream, the mother's she could not see, it was covered by another woman, equally as naked as she was dead.

Out of shear habit, Karin activated her scanner, as she hoped Shepard would somehow get her killed. The pile contain nearly thirty adolescent and adult women, but she was also reading as many, if not more infant males.

"The boys aren't useful to a skin farm. The girls can either be sold, or bread to increase stock. And as you can guess, they prefer disposal over medical treatment."

Lost in a frigid sea of emotion, Karin could only weakly whisper, "who?"

"Why, the venerable Dead Eyes Fulton, Doctor. The man whose life my taking of, was so egregious, that you considered desertion."

A volcano of fear erupted in the pit of Chakwas stomach.

"I know, because you were stupid enough to ask the dock crew if you could get passage back to earth."

Not a single member of the team seemed the least bit shocked or upset by their Admiral's revelation... Karin wondered if the entire crew knew.

Shepard flicked her head at Palmer. "Breach the lock. Doctor, you're in last. If we get into a fire fight, remain at standard spacing from the entrance until ordered otherwise, or until we die." She chuckled outright as she shrugged. "If we die, do whatever you want."

In quick succession: Palmer placed shaped charges on the hatch, detonated them; Shepard rushed in ahead of the others; Karin moved to stand in position, someone reached out to pull her in; the group picked up the door, secured it into place with clamps; then sprayed the exposed sides and holes with expanding foam.

Karin checked her scanner. "The compartment is pressurizing."

"Is the inner hatch sealed?" Shepard again moved into breach position.

Russell gave the hand signal for no. "Just a pressure interlock."

The Admiral turned to Chakwas. "This is the point where I need you Doctor. What you saw out there won't compare to what you'll see in here. Prepare yourself for these fuckers to shoot their slaves as we enter. *You*, keep the hell out of the line of fire until told to do otherwise." She menaced into Karin's space, her intimidating mass and rage filled face causing her to shrink. "Clear? You get yourself shot, and I might as well have bombarded this place from orbit and dispensed with this fuckery."

"Yes ma'am."

"Opening in three, two, one."

The team moved in a blur, a jumble of armoured bodies darting in and out of doors, until the Admiral was once again shouting.

"Doctor, here, now."

Karin followed Shepard's beacon, and once again, the tiny voice hoping she'd get killed, shouted into the fading dusk of her soul. Chain to the bed, a heavily pregnant girl... a projectile wound to her head... another to her RLQ...

Stepping forward, Chakwas began the scan. "The mother's dead. Within the last few hours at most." Then the worst... Her eyes closed as her anguish poured forth. "The fetus is still alive."

"Can you do anything for it?"

"No. There's not enough time, and we don't have means to transfer her to the shuttle."

"How long?"

"A few seconds."

"No, Doctor," the Admiral growled as she grabbed Chakwas' helmet, "how long would've the baby had to survive at the moment of the mother's death."

Confusion... panic... "The brain trauma would've made it instantaneous for the mother. A minute or two for her blood oxygen levels to fall to critical... a minute or two for the placenta to bleed out."

"The placenta's damaged?"

Realization... "Yes, it's nicked. A slow bleed, and there's not very much blood in the uterus. Seconds since they were shot, no more than a few minutes."

Whatever Karin thought rage looked like on Admiral Shepard's face before, it was replaced with the god like fury she was witnessing now. Every muscle, every line, every lash, screamed unbridled anger.

"They're still here! *Find them!*"

While the rest of the team ripped the place apart, Chakwas looked around the room. On what would be charitably described a dresser, there was a picture of the woman with a man behind her... his arm wrapped around her in a romantically possessive way... her eyes dead and downcast... He was winking at the camera, a tattoo where his eyebrow should be, read, 'you're already;' on his eyelid, 'dead...'

She abandoned her deceased patients, and proceeded to clear the rooms medically the others had cleared of combat. All she found, was more death and human cruelty. Several compartments were set up as literal prisons with temporary fencing acting as bars. Each and every cell housed at least one woman, some, the ones with younger girls, held three or four. In a much more sterile, almost medical compartment, she found rows of makeshift NICUs... but they weren't set up to help the immature weather their first few weeks in the world... they were more like livestock pens, designed to keep the bulk of urine and fecal matter away from the body.

In an adjacent section, toddlers... tied up like veal calves to small beds... one little girl in the corner... another terrifying heartbeat... But while the shot left her brain intact enough for autonomic functions, the damage would leave her in a permanent semi-vegetative state for the rest of her life... If untreated, the bleeding would kill her in a minute or two...

That's what Karin's universe had been reduced to, a series of minutes or twos. A minute or two to digest a horror, a minute or two for a life to exist before fading into nothing... Then the child opened her eyes, and began aspirating on her saliva. Her face remained placid as her body shook slightly, the gurgling and wheezing causing her head to twitch.

"I'm sorry." The emotions wrung so tightly at Karin's words, she wasn't sure she'd even said them, they could've been nothing more than a whisper.

Without thinking, she reached into her suit's storage compartment, took out the vial of Euthan-X; then injected the girl with a dose. The neural toxin was painless, almost immediate. It would cause her to fall unconscious in seconds, stop her heart in a minute or two, lead to complete neurological death in a minute or two more...

"Moving out!"

Karin had no idea how long she'd sat there before the Admiral's message came in... hours? seconds?

"Kratos, Shepard, emergency. Do not allow any ships in my area to leave the planet. Maximum force is authorized. Repeat, vaporize the fuckers before they hit the ground."

Staring down at that little girl, her face angelic... still... something in Chakwas mind, moved. She hadn't felt as if something snapped, more as if it had rearranged. The memory of Carl Fulton's murder played in her mind's eye, but the moment when Shepard had ordered her to stop treatment, Karin jammed a muscle stimulator into the hole torn into his groin, and suggested that he answer the Admiral's question... The memory became more violent each time she relived it...

She stood, marched toward the other member's indicators... They were already outside the base, sprinting toward an outcropping... There was an opening big enough for a small cargo ship to land and stow away... She broke into a mad dash following them...

Sooner than before, her body began to refuse to cooperate. She was exhausted, her muscles hurt, but this time, she stopped, pulled out her medical supplies; then injected herself with everything she could think of to keep herself going. It was a driving imperative that she get there before Shepard was finished with the targets.

When she arrived at the cave and cycled through the airlock, she found the others had already captured the pirates. Several dozen were lined up kneeling face-first into the wall, while more were being drug out of a ship in the centre.

"I wouldn't go in there Doctor."

Karin ignored Shepard's warning... if it was unsafe, she'd make it an order.

Inside the ship, it was worse than the compound. There, most were already dead, only two clinging on to life; here, everyone was in the process, including a few pirates shot in the back of the head. Somehow, she doubted Shepard's people were responsible, the other pirates had probably done it to there own, no doubt culling the weakest members to ensure silence.

She looked around, she might be able to save one slave, maybe two if she was fast and lucky, but she hesitated. Taking the time to evaluate each of them to determine who had the best chance of survival, would sacrifice countless others... Something deep inside prevented her from making that call... Equally, arbitrarily choosing one felt wrong... Was it okay to do nothing? Was she a monster for not wanting to choose? The indecision was only momentary however, she decided she couldn't save a single one, she didn't have enough time or supplies. She took out her injector and the Euthan-X, preparing to end their pain. She didn't think about what she was doing, or of the larger implications... or what it made her... She quickly finished the task; then moved back outside where most of the team had removed their helmets, where Shepard was pacing behind the prisoners.

"Congratulations, some of you get to trade spilling your guts in for saving your lives."

"Fuck you, you old, shit eating Alliance bitch," a man whom the team had separated exclaimed.

"I want to know the location of any possible skin farms, sale locations. I want names of contacts... Fuck, I want to know the name of the guy who sold you splash when you were thirteen."

"Ron O'Dally," the same man griped.

Shepard clapped. "Good for you. You get to choose which one of your men I kill first."

"You Alliance cunts ain't gonna kill no one, you're too concerned with image."

"If you think that, pick one."

"Reggie, eighth from the left."

The Admiral activated a control on her arm, making something that looked suspiciously like the shaped charges they used to breach the airlock with, explode on the back of the person's neck. The rest of the pirates had the same similarly affixed to the base of their skulls.

"Start talking people. Just let it all out."

A choir of desperation sang out into the cavernous room, each man blathering on about any information they could think of... Shepard, just continued to pace, watching over the despondent group pleading for their lives... The amusement she'd shown only moments ago, replaced by hard appraisal... Russell and Palmer stood at equal distance on the line, arms held out, recording the confessions... Johnston, stood by the man they'd singled out, the defiant one, the likely leader... Karin approached cautiously... each step a measure of will... Seeing his face would change everything...

 

A sharp intake of breath and slight muscle movements, signified the young old Admiral's waking. It wouldn't be long now...

 

How Karin had come to be standing directly over the man, she couldn't remember... but the words 'You're already' blazed in brilliant black over his dirty skin, she could in vivid colour. She'd thought she should've felt angry, infuriated, blinded... She hadn't, she'd only felt cold and detached. He blinked... 'You're already dead...'

"Admiral."

The bay went eerily still. Chakwas hadn't thought she shouted as loudly or as forcefully as she obviously had. Shepard, eyed her in return.

"I've detected a growth on this man, traces of which have infected some of the other victims we've encountered. For the safety of the crew, and anyone he may come in contact with in the future, I believe it must be removed."

The Admiral nodded. "Go ahead Doctor."

Karin knelt beside the pirate, removing and arranging the instruments and drugs she'd need to perform the surgery from her medical compartment. "Relax sir, I'll be administering an analgesic, you won't feel any pain."

"What the fuck are you talking about, what growth?"

"This is a muscle relaxant, it'll prevent you from moving about while I conduct the procedure." She injected his arms, legs, and sternum. "This is an analgesic." She switched the vile before beginning to cut his pants off.

"What are you doing?"

She shredded a line down both legs to the knees; then flipped the fabric open like a flap.

"What the fuck are you doing," his panic increased.

"You may feel a slight pinch."

The man lost all semblance of composure the moment the cold metal tip of the injector pressed against the site of one of his perineal arteries. He screamed, spittle flying and dribbling over his lips, he shouted obscenities, threatened death. Karin ignored him.

"I will now make the first incision." She began as the pirate started lashing his head from side to side. "Commander Johnston, if you could hold his shoulders? It matters little if he wishes to watch the procedure."

"Sure doc."

Chakwas had no way of knowing what was going through Johnston's mind, nor did she ever ask... He followed her instruction succinctly, there was no censure or joviality in his voice... he just followed the instructions... And she felt no different than from any other procedure she'd ever performed... The bio-waste she simply cast to the side, Shepard would likely have a plan to destroy the base and all its structures, she'd sent Dead Eyes' ship onto a course for a star before pulverizing it to shreds...

For the remainder of her life, she could clearly recall separating his corpus cavernosum from pubic symphysis, fusing off the vas deferens, and inserting a slow degrading stint to help form a new urethral opening... but little else was clear... except for his incessant screaming...

Pulling a device from her supplies, she showed it to her... patient. "This is a nerve stimulator, typically used to prevent atrophy or to encourage recovery. Unfortunately, do to our situation, and the nature of the growth, I will have to use it on its highest setting to destroy the growth's nerve pathways. I'm sorry sir, but this will hurt quite a bit."

His screams during surgery had been profane, anger fuelled, horrified... now they were terror induced, frightened... despondent... She held the device to the man's skin until she was sure the energy had reached his spine; then, began packing up.

"Well," Shepard declared in a threateningly joyful way, "anyone else have anything to say before I let Butch here have her way with you?"

The other pirates, the rest of the team, the rock walls, the ship, blurred into a haze... All Karin could see, was 'You're already Dead,' struggling to maintain eye contact.

"I'll kill you... I'll find your family, your parents, your children, I'll kill them too. If you ever have a daughter, if you have a sister, I'll sell them to the lowest, dirtiest bidder, and when they're all used up, and every hole on their bodies' are turned inside out, I'll make them drink their own blood until they choke on it."

"Chak... *Chakwas*!"

Karin looked to Shepard to see slight irritation masking concern.

"You know what to do next."

Nodding, she took the Euthan-X, shoved it up the pirate's nose; then shot a small amount into his brain. "You were saying sir?"

Normally, the chemical overpowered all the body's systems simultaneously, but in very small quantities, it destroyed nervous tissue only locally, with very little spreading. The pirate remained fully aware as the drug began destroying his temporal and frontal lobes. But what shocked Karin the most, was even as his cognition degraded, he continued to threaten and curse her.

The eradication of useful consciousness, should've only taken seconds, but it felt like minutes; then hours, as she stared down at his technically living, soulless eyes... She had little idea how long it had been before Shepard removed her armour's gauntlet, laced their fingers together, and sat down beside her.

"You're probably asking yourself why. Why did you do that? Rage is the simplest answer. If we took them in, the pain and misery they caused, the deaths they were responsible for, wouldn't've even been close to atoned for. Why did he keep threatening you, despite you very clearly being in the position of power? I don't really know. Some repent, some beg, some cry, some go resigned... and some, well they just carry on like nothing's going to kill them.

"Why did I let you, maybe even bait you into doing it? I'm a Frontier Ranger, given extrajudicial authority by the governments to maintain law and order out here. This absolves you and the rest of the crew from any responsibility, and while there's very little I could do to get myself into serious shit, I'm not above the law. Out here, taking prisoners is so difficult as to be impossible... so we don't. We also don't go after the little fuckups doing equally horrible, but mostly limited bullshit. We're after guys like these, the ones twisting humanity into something terrifying. Cannibals. They may not literally eat human flesh, although if you stick around, you *will* see that, but they consume other humans for their own gain.

"I was also intentionally being hard on you before the burst, going home wouldn't be cowardice, no one on the ship will condemn you for it. But your psych profile looked like you could handle this."

"You chose me?" Karin was utterly stunned.

Shepard took a deep breath, squeezed Chakwas hand, pattered her fingers. "Yeah. Might've scarred you for life, but I won't apologize for it, we need people like you out here. Mentally and physically strong, morally secure, situationally flexible... You might agonize about the part you played in what happened today, but I know that you'll never have a doubt in your mind that that guy deserved what he got."

"Torture has been shown to be a worthless means of interrogation."

"Chak-"

Karin shook her head. "Please don't call me that."

"Chak," Shepard restated with an impish smirk, "us being here today, wasn't about collecting intel, I know very well that half the information these bastards gave us was their families' stellar addresses, places they had a good meal, or whatever other shit they thought up. We'll be luck if only sixty percent of it is useless. Today, was about removing these people from the population. We could've done it from orbit, but there was a chance they might've given up without killing the slaves... Or we could just shoot them without the pageantry of questioning, but we also could've just shot Carl 'dead between the eyes' Fulton, and not gotten this location.

"Hun, if you stay, I'll force you to do things that'll give you nightmares, and just as frequently, you'll choose to do things you think at this very moment, you'll never do. You might even be writing a list in your head of what you're willing and unwilling, but eventually, you'll cross every one of those lines. Good and evil are just arbitrary concepts, they have meaning in certain contexts, but in others, they're just hindrances. Stay with me, and this won't be your last execution; leave, and you can live the rest of your life with only the Alliance commendation given to you for your participation in this bloodbath. The choice is yours..."

 

Shepard's eyes opened a crack to look about the room. She was fully alert, and ready to be conditioned to meet her granddaughter for the first time.


	7. The Other Commander)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the threshold of meeting with the Damysus' crew, and the woman her Grandmother most often spoke of, Shepard continues to suffer the aftermath of Hannah's attack, and begins questioning her own judgment.

Damysus' shadow loomed over the shuttle, hiding Sol, a distant but familiar spec, behind its hulking silhouette in the already dim reaches of near interplanetary space. The sight caused a seething sea of apprehension to boil in Jane's stomach... This was the Admiral's ship... her crew...

 

"Are you sure?"

Shepard glanced at the officers out of her peripheral vision, refusing to give the assholes the satisfaction of knowing of her curiosity.

"I've checked the file half a dozen times, and someone's already been alerted, and it's been accessed at least a dozen more by others."

The idiots were panicking, scared shitless about something... Obviously not of her, they'd already subdued her and secured her in their shuttle; they could easily rape and kill her and get away with it, she was only a filthy Reser to them after all.

"Shepard, Jane, born April 11th, 2154, dead August 20th, 2154."

"She doesn't exactly look dead."

"No kidding moron."

Jane? Was that her first name? She'd never known or gone by anything other than Shepard. Her parents called her that, the other Resers... everyone. And who would name their child Jane? It's what you called people who didn't have one... Jane Doe. Maybe her biological parents never named her, they hadn't wanted her, so maybe they didn't bother giving her a name before they left her in the Abandon... Jane Doe Shepard, stripped of identity and thrown away to fend for herself in the wasteland of the past... Saying it like that, almost made it sound like the beginning of an epic story, one where 'Shepard the Hero' rose up to vanquish the evils plaguing the lands of Abandon...

But why would that scare these idiots, it wasn't like she was important... at least not to anyone other than another Reser. Were her biological parents heinous criminals? Did they think she could lead them to them? Was she a ticking genetic time bomb? Maybe her parents hadn't abandoned her, maybe they secreted her away to protect her from some unthinkable consequence...

"Oh shit," one of them dreaded, "an Alliance shuttle's descending."

The other glanced back at Shepard, checking her condition. "She'll kill us."

Who would? Her biological mother? No one gave a shit when the Boots ruffed up a Reser, so why would some bitch who left her daughter in the least civilized place on the planet? Their fear was real though, and they kept going over her medical scans... Not just the injuries they'd inflicted upon her, they obsessed over old, already healed ones...

"North Eastern Enforcement Shuttle Number Five, this is Hastings' shuttle one, Commander Anderson calling."

"The Hastings is here? What the hell is the Hastings doing here?"

Tensions spiked to near unbearable levels... This was the first moment Shepard truly began to feel concerned since her capture. These two were so wound up, they could be capable of anything... even killing her and hiding her body to escape whatever reprisals they feared.

One of the officers put on a calm voice. "Hastings' shuttle, Nor-east Five, what's your business."

"When can dispense with the usual jurisdictional bull gentlemen. How is she?"

He hesitated. "She's malnourished, and a little dehydrated, but no substantial injuries."

"I see. Miss, what do I call you?"

Shepard didn't respond or look up, she kept her eyes focused on the ground... her head down.

"The Commander asked you a question Reser-"

"Mister," Anderson shouted before the officer could fully finish his sentence. "Your names."

The man visibly swallowed. "Sergeant Friday and Romero, sir."

"Sargent, you and your partner can leave and take position outside."

"Sir-"

"This is a military matter Sargent. Exit the vehicle, and leave our guest."

"Yes sir."

There was real subordination in Friday's voice, a forlorn defeat. Shepard was important somehow, worthy of reprimanding those guys. That knowledge caused something to spark in the pit of her stomach, something completely unfamiliar... something like power. Not the power she'd felt protecting the Abandon, or when people twice her age showed her respect and deference, or when scum cowered from her... It almost felt like when she had the credits to buy fresh water or supplies for the community... like it was something worth enough to trade in to help others.

"They tell me you go by Shepard."

"I do." She continued to stare downward.

"My name's David." There was a long pause, the man was obviously waiting for a reply. He continued. "I assume you already know I'm a Commander with the Systems Alliance, and for some reason, I've been sent to retrieve you."

"You'd have to be an utter fool not to be able to work that out."

"I agree, but unfortunately, most people are foolish. Or at least pretend to be." Another pregnant silence. "Do you know much about who you are?"

"Of course I know who I am," Shepard snapped.

Anderson laughed. "Yes, of course you do. I'm sorry, qhat I meant was, do you know much about who you are, to us?"

"My name, and that I'm supposed to be dead."

"It was presumed that you died when your parents' shuttle went down."

The sensation of a physical shock shot through Shepard's body. "They died in a crash?"

"They were climbing to orbit when there was a malfunction."

"They didn't abandon me?"

"Lord no girl," David asserted with absolute conviction. "The craft plummeted from almost one hundred kilometres... There was little to nothing left.

"Then how did I survive?"

"Baby carriers are designed to withstand extreme impact forces. Yours would've been military grade, and you were probably in yours before the accident."

"What were their names?"

"Jennifer Shepard, and Mark Meer."

Faceless, shapeless unknowns... ghosts haunting her nebulous past... given form by the magical incantation... of speaking their names. Did she look like them? Sound like them? Did they need implants to hear? It'd been a sore, confusing detail for as long as she knew they existed... why would someone go to the trouble of giving an infant costly and delicate to install implants, only to abandon her. They'd told her that they found her inside the Abandon, alone, nothing but a set of clothes with a name tag stitched to them...

"Why didn't anyone look for me?"

"They did," David answered kindly. "Your grandmother, Admiral Shepard, was among the first responders on scene. She searched the site, but had to pull back when the shuttle's drive core exploded. Parts of your carrier were found after the explosion along with some personal items, and traces of your DNA. The Alliance assumed you died in the crash or the explosion. The Admiral kept searching."

"The incursions..." Every Reser alive back then, talked about it. About how the Alliance violated the Abandoned Territories Act, about how they scanned and catalogued everyone... about how they violated everyone's rights and gave no one a choice... They were doing it to search for her... And her parents, the people who found her, proudly told her how they protected her from those searches...

"Eventually, the Alliance forced your grandmother to relent, but she never gave up."

"Why?"

"Because you and her daughter were her only family. Lieutenant Shepard's remains were recovered-"

"Is she the only one left I'm related to?"

Anderson hesitated. "Your father's parents passed away a few years ago."

"And Admiral Shepard?"

"Look up."

Shepard didn't want to, she didn't want to be faced with the reality unfolding all around her. There were unanswered questions, immutable truths shattered, constants becoming variables... An hour ago, she was on a mission to free people taken as slaves, and serve vengeance on a group terrorizing her community... She was a killer, a weapon anointed in blood and set loose upon evil... Now she was a child, teetering on the edge of an unknown grownup taking her away from everything she'd ever known.

"Girl," David said firmly, "look at the screen."

She did, and instead of seeing the man's face, she saw representation of a ship, select parts flashing red, and the moving image of a room she recognized as a bridge.

"Why are there lights flashing," she acted the fool.

"The Admiral was in the Attican Traverse when she was notified of you. She's pushing her engines to get to earth as quickly as possible."

"Do I have a choice?" More foolishness.

"Probably not. I could lie for you, tell her that the scan was an errant result, but knowing the Admiral, nothing would stop her from finding you, and confirming that for herself."

A person willing to fight for her... Many fought *with* her, watched her back, acted as lookout while she and others rested... and people fought over her... but no one ever fought *for* her...

"I believe you should have a choice Shepard. But I also believe that if you're thinking about staying, you're not taking everything into consideration. I read your arrest report, I know what you did, and I understand why you did it. If you stay here, you can continue to protect the Abandon... until the next time you are arrested, and your scans cause another alert. But even if you manage to stay hidden for the rest of your life there, you'd be missing something greater. You could join the Alliance, and protect humans all over the galaxy trying to make a life for themselves. It's what your grandmother and mother have done their entire lives, protect others. Admiral Shepard is a hero many times over, and your mother had begun making a name for herself as one as well."

"Bridge, engineering. Port thrusters are now fifty degrees above red line, starboard seventy five."

"I can fucking see that Rich, I have a systems display in front of my god damned face just like you."

Her grandmother's voice... the first time Shepard had ever heard anyone even remotely related to her. It didn't sound anything like her own voice, nothing like she'd imagine a relative would sound like... Did that matter? Did families sound like one another?

"Vent helium through the combustion shroud and let it bleed into space... And find out why the hell Anderson hasn't commed yet."

Apprehension began to boil in Shepard's stomach, this woman was a force far greater than herself, beyond anything she'd ever imagined. The anger and impatience in her voice cut through the fabric of reality itself... the rock hard demand for obedience... the razor sharp slice of command. The spark of power faded into the churning oblivion of anxiety. She was nothing compared to this woman... no one could compare...

"Anderson here."

"David, why the hell haven't you reported in yet?"

"There might be a problem with the scan ma'am."

"What the fuck are you talking about... Those enforcement idiots ran the scan eight times, how in the fuck could they screw it up eight fucking times."

"I don't know Admiral, I'm checking on it."

Shepard back-peddled into the unyielding chair, abstract fear clawing at her chest. She couldn't lie to this woman, something terrible and profound would happen if she tried.

"They always called me Shepard." It was ridiculous and feeble... and the only thing she could think to say...

"Jane?"

Her world upended itself... variables shifted... truths evaporated... questions echoed... Her given name, never before spoken directly to her, said with such pain, and anguish, and longing... A world of torment and barely restrained emotions... Plain, raw, heartache, tangled into a name she never knew was hers... spoken to her in earnest.

 

Damysus' loomed... The Admiral's ship... her crew... de Burka was her closest friend... What if convincing Jane to come to the ship, to take on passengers, was a plot to make her vulnerable to attack... to lull her into a sense of comfort so she'd crack open her impenetrable armour...

This younger version of Hannah Shepard was cold, unhinged, psychopathic... she was devoid of caring and warmth, of all semblance of motherhood... Her crew was probably as callus and merciless if not more so, and de Burka could be plotting revenge on behalf of her friend and Captain... Hannah was dangerous... Her crew would be dangerous... Shepard shouldn't be trusting them... she should be protecting herself... her own crew... her Bondmate...

"Orienting mass emitters aft."

Cortez shook Shepard from her thought spiral, and she leaned over the man's shoulder to verify the controls as a matter of instinct. "Don't kick the beams up too high, Damysus isn't designed to withstand eezo deformation."

"Quite true." Liara slipped in beside her Bondmate. "The hull could lose mass cohesion." 

Steve smirked up at the women. "I've been flying these for a while ma'ams."

Shepard had chosen to come herself, in a shuttle, with a minimal complement, to negate any malicious intent on de Burka's part... But it was foolish, made them considerably more vulnerable... it put Liara in danger... put their...

"I'm being a fool," she muttered to herself.

The Maiden reflexively reached for the Woman's hand, but spoke her statement aloud. "You are not my Love, you're 'gambling for a greater reward'."

"This whole crew could be completely nuts, and every one of them might be waiting to take a strip out of us to curry favour with the Admiral."

"Shepard, she is a Captain."

"What," the Spectre boggled, genuinely baffled at what her Bondmate's point could be.

"You have reminded yourself many times, you do not know the being in sickbay, but you continue to conflate her with the Admiral Shepard you once did. Continuing to do this, will only lead to more confusion. You must deal with these people as you would any other." Liara paused a moment, studying her Bondmate's features as much as her mind. "If this were Aria's crew, how would you proceed?"

Infinity drew Shepard's eye, her emotions intensifying as her thoughts wandered... The fear clawing at her chest wasn't over whatever harm the Damysus' crew could do to her team, it was what it'd mean if they tried. It'd be another betrayal, another vicious attack by the woman who wasn't quite her grandmother...

Shepard's gaze narrowed, her focus falling to the Asari. "Stop that."

"I am doing nothing my Love." Liara smiled innocently. "They are your own thoughts."

Ignoring her Bondmate's mental prodding, the Commander turned to the empty cabin. "You've just volunteered to stow aboard the Damysus and observe."

"Hmmm," the Thief's crisp voice sprang from nowhere, "I thought that was the plan all along. I *will* miss all the fun on Normandy though."

"Don't go anywhere near Captain Shepard's quarters, she'll have them booby trapped."

"Why would she do such a thing?" Liara baffled.

"Mostly for amusement, partially to punish anyone who'd invade her privacy."

Kasumi sighed pleasantly. "A girl after my own heart."

"Goto," Shepard gruffed into the vacancy. "One of these days, you'll regret sneaking around and insisting yourself into situations like this."

"Shep, you might as well ask a flower not to blossom, or a star not to shine..."

"Hard lock," Cortez interjected as the shaking shuttle interrupted. "Deploying docking curtain."

"This crew won't be anything like T'Loak's lackeys." Shepard continued speaking into the emptiness. "These people will be highly trained, well seasoned, and as on alert as a rat aboard a frigate."

"Good thing you have a little mouse like me then," Kasumi gleefully replied.

The Commander menaced into the barren air. "Stow it Goto. This isn't a bunch of paid mercenaries, or a gaggle of guards so bored with their job, they're hoping for something like you to come along. They're the people of the woman who taught me everything I know, they're paranoid from fighting a civil war, and they're not stupid. Be, fucking, careful."

"Shep..." The Thief began, but then deflated. "Alright Commander, I'll be careful."

"Cortez."

He turned toward the Commander, but kept his eyes averted. "I've been equalizing pressure slowly ma'am. Thought you might want a little extra time."

"Thank you Steve. Stay in the shuttle, and if need be, rip yourself off the Damysus and return to Normandy."

"Understood."

Ghostly fear persisted in Shepard's chest... The feeling of being watched crawled over her skin... The hatch barely sealing a seething and unseen wellspring of dread and danger... This was a trap, a con to eliminate a valuable target... She was being stupid, unnecessarily trusting... She needed to take precautions... These people were unknowns...

In an instant, the tension in her chest snapped, the spring coiling itself around the top of her stomach unleashed. "Halt operations. I’ve changed my mind."

Liara, Cortez, and the invisible Kasumi, froze, none entirely sure what exactly the Commander was referring to, and all slightly concerned at witnessing the first instance of her countermanding her own order.

"We’re wearing hard suits. Break out the backups in aft. Cortez, you’re arming yourself, Liara, you’re not arguing. Set your VIs to combat mode and independent target tracking. We’ll enter casual, but prepare for extreme hostility."

"Of course Commander." The Maiden moved to the storage lockers without fuss; then handed out an armour package to each occupant, save for Kasumi, who needed her tactical gear to remain unhindered to function properly.

"Goto, I’m assuming you have a backup cloak?"

"I do, and a bubble suit for just in case."

"Good." Shepard shoved herself into the ill-fitting breast plate. "They’ll be using gas propelled projectile weapons and low yield explosive grenades. If things get hot, fall back into the shuttle, and seal the door. Kasumi, you’re to bug out as well, but stay cloaked." As everyone was likewise suited, she didn’t wait for reply or comment. "Crack the seal."

The hatch slid away, revealing the woman Shepard had spoken to only minutes before, standing centre stage... and more than a foot shorter than she’d expected... Her original assumption of de Burka being obviously tiny, was an under exaggeration if anything... she couldn’t be more than fifty kilos, and no more than a hundred and fifty centimetres. It was completely incongruous with what she'd been prepared for. But it would be just like Admiral Shepard to choose someone unassuming everyone would underestimate.

De Burka saluted neatly. "Commander Shepard. Welcome aboard the Damysus."

"Commander de Burka," Shepard replied automatically as she mirrored the salute.

 

Shepard was still in the shuttle, Anderson had joined her hours before. He'd removed her shackles, gave her food and water, and for a time, just sat there, saying nothing. He'd landed beside her shuttle early on in their conversation, but allowed her to be alone to process all the information he was throwing at her. After the Admiral said little more than, I'll be there soon, he transferred over, and they sat in silence.

It was ridiculous for them to just sit there, they could easily fly to a base or up to a ship, they'd be much more comfortable, but something in Shepard wanted to remain. This was the threshold between her old life and a possible new one... a waiting room between before and after... a null space...

Time both stood still, and flew by... she was both ready to bolt, and sit their until she died... When the door opened, and Admiral Shepard stood there in all her glory, Jane reeled from the astonishment of this larger than life character, being so different... She was old, her hair white/blond, tied in a bulb at the back of her neck... her eyes had crows feet jetting out from them over her temples... her skin was dusted with barely noticeable freckles... But her eyes were piercing, her jaw was strong, and her mouth was passive... as if she'd been trained out of an instinct to bite...

 

"This is Lieutenant-Commander Gordon Grimes, Doctor Edward Barlow, Lieutenant Ellen Riley, and Commander Benji Dorcas," Catherine gestured to each officer in turn.

It struck Shepard how much like an older child de Burka looked. Her arms, legs, waist, and shoulders, lacked any kind of definition or mass. Her breasts and face were really her only features which suggested her gender. Face to face, the woman's eyebrows were a little more apparent, but almost the same colour as her skin, her hair gleamed in the artificial lights, and was tied back in a knot... Her eyes were filled with compassion... Her lips puckered tightly, as if trying to hold her thoughts from spilling out... And she stood tall with her limited height, not attempting to artificially inflate it in any way.

As she analyzed de Burka, she caught the sound of one of the men sniggering, and seized upon its unprofessionalism. She gave him a hard, suspicious glare before turning back to the other commander. "Am I missing something?

"No ma’am. Commander Dorcas’ name is Benjamin, but the Captain openly humiliates him, and encourages the crew to do the same. I miss spoke."

Shepard eyed Dorcas skeptically. "He’s the ship’s first officer?"

Catherine nodded.

"But *you* are receiving us?"

"Yes ma’am."

"And he doesn’t seem to want to respond to either... situation?"

"He has a unique medical condition Commander. He was born without a spine or testicles."

Gently, Shepard’s harsh scowl faded, her eyes brightened, and her lips curled into a smirk. "I’m sure he functions as a perfectly adequate person in micro gravity." As half the assembled crew tried to hide their respective merriment, Jane’s heart sank... her Grandmother was a bully. "We should go."

"I have a demand," de Burka stalled.

"Of course you do."

"If you’re truly from the future, then you know everything about us, but we know nothing about you. I would like the personnel records of every member of your crew."

Shepard nodded. "Fine, but I have a demand of my own." She motioned toward Liara. "Doctor T’Soni will meld with you and your party, to determine if any of you have any ill intent." When no one responded, she clarified. "Asari have the ability to form temporary connections with other’s minds."

"Telepathy," Riley waxed in wonderment; "The hell I will," Barlow exclaimed over the science officer.

Ignoring them, de Burka maintained her exclusive attention on the new Shepard. "We have concerns."

"Of course you do," the Commander deadpanned, but sank further into unease as the mood in the corridor shifted. Almost in unison with Catherine, she turned to see that Liara was already holding Riley’s hand, her eyes as black as the depths of the universe.

"English," Riley's entire demeanour glowed with marvel, "I hear your thoughts in English..."

Catherine's nervousness rose. "The idea of sharing one's thoughts, is not as welcome to some."

"Doctor T'Soni will not be probing your memories," Shepard reassured. "She'll only listen to your surface thoughts. I doubt any of you have any experience with melding, so I doubt you'll be able to hide anything preoccupying."

"Some of us may have non-pertinent thoughts we'd rather keep to ourselves."

Shepard's expression hardened. "Too bad. Your Captain turned my insides into a puree... If you want to move forward, you give up some of your rights."

"Is it?"

"Is what?"

"Is it a right not to be forced to share your thoughts?"

Shepard reeled slightly. "Of course it is. Melding with someone without their permission is tantamount to assault."

"And what if Doctor T'Soni hears something one of us would rather not share," de Burka persisted.

"Then I'm sure Liara will show discretion, and keep it to herself."

"Hey," Grimes interjected, "if the other asari women are half as sexy as this one, I wouldn't mind being melded with anytime."

"All asari are physically female," Riley clarified as she drifted blissfully.

"Even better."

"I'll go next." Catherine's words were spoken more as a command than anything else.

When neither Liara nor Riley moved to break their connection, Shepard turned a mild ire on them. "Could we proceed? Please?"

"Lieutenant Riley is quite eager to learn Shepard," the Maiden replied, revelling in the first lecture she'd given in half a decade. "She is especially interested in the physical conditions an object exhibits as its mass transitions."

"You can be Professor T'Soni later," she warned in asari standard, "right now, I need you to be my officer."

Liara made her apologies to the young woman before lowering her hand. "Of course Shepard. I am sorry."

"I understood what she said," Riley gaped, "while we were connected... I understood."

"Because Liara understood," Shepard clarified, switching back to Alliance standard. "Things like language comprehension, are completely automatic. People simply understand when spoken to in their native tongue. When melding, that inherent understanding is transferred."

"Interesting," de Burka dismissed as she moved forward. She extended a hand. "Let's get this over with."

Liara's eyes widened the moment the meld formed between them. The woman was dispensing with any notion that she could hide her thoughts from the Maiden, and exposed her thoughts plainly, openly, while explaining why she wanted to keep them secret for now. But as Shepard so often pointed out, the meld worked both ways, and almost as quickly, Catherine learned exactly why keeping those things from Shepard, would ultimately be impossible. They came to an understanding with asari like ease; then mutually released the other's hand.

"The commander possesses interesting thoughts, but nothing of concern."

Shepard held the Asari's eye for a lingering moment, she could sense her Bondmate was holding something back, but decided to let it go for now. She might not be able to trust her Grandmother's crew, but she could trust Liara.

The Maiden held her hand out to Benjamin. He froze. "Please tell the commander not to fear, and that he must be next."

Dorcas was obviously on edge, ready to react... how, Shepard could only guess. Something about his demeanour told her that this man was exactly as de Burka jokingly described him as, a spineless, ball-less, coward. She noticed that de Burka was also carefully avoiding drawing his attention, while Liara gently kept it... They'd arranged something, they had to have...

"Commander Dorcas, there's no need to fear Liara or the meld. Whatever you think you're afraid of, it's probably not what's at issue."

Relief flooded the man's face the moment the Maiden touched him. He nodded, stepped back, and returned to being an unobtrusive lump next to the wall. Shepard wasn't surprised when the Asari didn't move on to Grimes or Barlow, and instead took her hand.

'Catherine suspected Benjamin was a spy. He confirmed this. Both agree he would be in danger if he remained aboard your Grandmother's vessel, and both wish him to be taken into protective custody. I have assured him we would protect him until we could release him to his faction. Both believe your Grandmother would kill him if given the opportunity.'

"Like I said Dorcas," Shepard turned to the man, "nothing to be afraid of. Nor do either of you two." She cast a glance at Grimes and Barlow.

"I'm not worried." Gordon held up his arm. "I would love to have a beautiful woman like yourself crawling around inside my head."

Liara touch the man only briefly, her face instantly souring as she did so. "The man is as lecherous as he appears, and will follow whatever orders Captain Shepard or Commander de Burka issue him."

"Great," Shepard sarcastically opined. "Mister Barlow?"

"Absolutely not."

"It's either this, or a pressure suit," de Burka threatened.

"I'll take my chances drifting in space," the doctor affirmed with no small measure of disdain.

"You *will* allow the nice asari... person to scan your mind, or I *will* order Grimes to shoot your toes off one by one."

"I won't submit to anything reading my thoughts, especially not some inhuman alien creature!"

A burst of violence erupted. Commander de Burka grabbed the doctor, and despite her size, pulled him over herself while flinging him down the corridor using her legs. "You're relieved of duty, stripped of rank, and confined to the brig. Ensign Kanji, Russo, shove him in the hole."

Shepard waited for the moment to die down. "That wasn't necessary."

"Perhaps not on your ship Commander Shepard," Catherine breathed, "but on Captain Shepard's, it is."

The woman was tough, Jane had to admit, Barlow was at least twice her size, but crap like that wasn't acceptable in the Alliance. "Fine. Liara, could you pass me a data pad, and check on Kasumi?"

"Of course Shepard."; "I'm in engineering Shep."

"Thank you," she replied to both. "These devices should be fairly easy for you to use, their outer appearance and method of operation hasn't really changed much in two hundred years."

Unexpectedly, Liara flung a pad over to Shepard. She reached out to snatch it from the air, but it was too high, and too far away for her to catch, and missed. Out of reflex, she tossed a pull to yank it close enough to grab. When she returned her attention back to the Damysus' crew, they were slack jawed and filled with shock. The Maiden had suggested she find an opportunity to use her own biotics...

"I think Doctor Barlow will regret his decision when this reaches him," de Burka joked.

"The ability isn't innate." Shepard handed the pad to the other commander. "It comes from exposure to element zero. Sometimes, it forms nodules that a person can learn to use to manipulate the mass effect field. Sometimes, it turns cancerous, and kills the individual. Primary exposure must occur in utero."

"Am I correct in assuming that sometimes occurs without the mother's permission, or concern for the child?"

"Very little of the human condition has changed in the following years. There are still unscrupulous individuals. And to my knowledge, neither my parents nor the Admiral exposed me intentionally. In fact, it wasn't known when I received primary exposure. There's a very small chance, that a shuttle crash I was involved in as an infant, was my primary exposure."

"Than fully mature individuals can't acquire these powers?"

Shepard waffled slightly. "That's a little more complicated of an answer. For now, let's just say that it's exceptionally rare, and that the weird reports from martian colonists, are linked. But in all cases, it's very dangerous, and those who go out of their way to acquire these abilities, are reckless. Asari, along with a few other species, evolved in the presence of element zero, so biotics, as they're called, are so common, that you could say it's indicative."

De Burka steeled herself. "I'd rather have our doctor examine Captain Shepard, but at the moment, there's no one qualified aboard ship I'm willing to risk."

"Understood. If it's any consolation, Doctor Chakwas was a close personal friend of the Admiral."

"It's not Commander, it's a concern." Catherine allowed herself an extra second of doubt. It was possible, and more than conceivable that the blue... person deceived her, or that her assumptions regarding Commander Shepard were entirely wrong. But the more this progressed, the more two things became apparent. Everything was as it seemed, and someone from the future planned all this. "Commander, if you're satisfied, we're prepared to leave."

"I'm not," Shepard said honestly. "But any other choice, comes with its own benefits and shortcomings."

"But you'd still like the Captain to be receptive."

A pang of angst shot through Jane's abdomen. "I would, and you are the only people who'll be able to convince her of the reality of the situation."

"I'm sorry to tell you this Commander, but we're not. Only time and exposure will convince Captain Shepard."

**Author's Note:**

> Okay! Dokay!
> 
> So first, these two chapters were originally one, and the theme that held them together, was the flashbacks to Admiral Shepard, but, I had a hard rethink about where this story was going, some of which I really didn't like. Originally, the Admiral was going to be a lot more... well evil isn't the right word, but more like a rogue(DC-esque) than a renegade(Mass Effect). I'd planned her to be the mirror of Jane Shepard, somewhat like watching the Janus of Shepard interacting and competing, but then somewhere along the line, Hannah really started absorbing my own anger and jadedness... which is very much NOT what I wanted. I also didn't want them to be the opposite of one another, I wanted them to be on the same side, not as a matter of coincidence(Chakwas hints at this line of thought), but because it was the right thing to do... The difference between them, is what they felt humanity, and human beings individually, were capable of.
> 
> I think, I'm more or less happy with these two chapters, I think they have the elements I want, I think they're balanced, and I don't think I relied too heavily on any one... writing gimmick... which I think I have in the past. There are a few parts I think are a little rough, but I also think these chapters are much heavier hitters than the previous ones... so I'll probably have to at least re-edit and punch those up, if not outright rewrite them...
> 
> Geh, Too many I thinks...
> 
> For the first time in a long while, I feel truly creative and in touch with writing. Mostly, before, I was pushing myself, trying to get something down and not let myself laps, which I sort of did... I often get bogged down in criticizing my own style, rigidly applying rules I think make my stories more palatable... and generally doing all the nasty prescriptivist things I'd never condemn anyone else to. I'm really my own worst enemy. And truthfully, if you don't like my stories as I want to write them, then there's really no point in trying to make them something I don't want them to be. I don't agree with writers who say they write for themselves, I can sit here and daydream all by myself to do that, I write for you... But much like friendship, I can't make myself be something someone else wants me to be... and my stories can't be anything other than they are.
> 
> So, I hope you enjoy, and thank you very much for reading.
> 
> P.S. What kinda brought me to this realization, but not entirely, was reading someone seriously hating on semicolons... like one killed his dog or something, so none of them could ever be trusted ever again. He couldn't explain why he didn't like them, but to him, even one in a story was jarring enough to detract from his enjoyment substantially. So... I guess... you can't really please anyone, you just got to invite them in, show them around, and be happy if they stay a while.
> 
> Also, Dark Matter on Netflix is FUCKING COOL! Watch it. I think it's probably the best TV I've ever watched. There's probably something else I'd change my mind to and say it was better, but at the moment, I can't think of what that is. I'm not saying I think Dark Matter was the best SHOW ever, Star Trek The Next Generation was, I'm saying it's the best TV ever. It has everything you'd want a serial to have. The show makes you want to continue watching, holds your attention, has great characters, lots of fighting and tech and gadgets, lots of character development, TONS of twists... and was cancelled for IDIOTIC CORPORATE REASONS! It was popular, made money, but not owned by the studio showing it... So they canned it, and I think, but I have no proof of this, they let the idea that they were going to renew it linger long enough, to ruin it ever being picked up by anyone else, out of spite. So, if you want any chance of it ever getting another season or maybe a movie that wraps things up, get Netflix, watch it, watch it again... than watch it again. Re-viewings matter.
> 
> Anyway, I mention this because I think I have a story that might fit into that universe well. It's a standalone, doesn't really have a point, and really doesn't rely too heavily on the show, except that you have a basic knowledge of the technology and story lines, the wiki summery is basically enough. It COULD fit just about any universe, but I think the Dark Matter characters would be a good fit. Anyways, something I'm thinking about if anyone's interested.


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